Moving Into Harmony

MOVEMENT & BREATHING: HEALTH / PERFORMANCE PROGRAMS

Anatomy

Breathe through your nose – Your Body-Mind will love you!

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30 functions of the Nose

Promotes Relaxation & Balancing the Nervous System

Nasal breathing has a naturally greater resistance than mouth breathing to how air enters and exits the body. This promotes a slower breathing rate, a lower breath with greater recruitment of the diaphragm and brings about balancing nervous system’s response to activities of daily living. The perceived effort or demand of any activity can be met with greater internal stability.

Boosts Brain Functions

Nasal breathing helps to bring greater clarity with all functions of the human brain. This includes task prioritization, orientation, interpretation of information, recall and memory, intuitive integration, perception and so much more. The brain is one of the greatest consumers of oxygen. Proper nasal breathing stimulates and optimizes oxygen delivery for all functions. Furthermore, nasal breathing during sleep has shown to help the brain circulate all fluids for rest, recovery and restoration of brain tissues, especially the glial-lymph tissue responsible for removal of metabolites and keeping a healthy environment for all brain cells and tissues.

Expand Visual-Spatial Field

The eyes are directly linked to nasal breathing. With a greater expanse in the visual field – seeing the forest through the trees – promotes a neurological circuit of more relaxed breathing. When the eyes are looking at something specific – a big redwood in the forest – then the breath changes to slightly more rapid as the concentration, often with a greater work load to focus, and stimulates survival mechanism internally.

In 2019, researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel suggested that nasal inhalation could be linked to part of an evolutionary survival mechanism. We see this in nature with other mammals using their nose in environments, and can sense the state of safety. The Weizmann team theorized that nasal breathing in modern life and competitive sports might trigger the brain for visual-spatial focus. They demonstrated that nasal breathing synchronized electrical activity in the brain on a wavelength that helped to maximize visual-spatial (VS) awareness.

Mediates Smell & Behavioral Response

The nose and its functions shape our behavior, memory, and emotional responses.

The sense of smell is directly linked to the gateway of our emotional and survival systems – the limbic complex which includes the amygdala and hippocampus centers. The amygdala is responsible for the emotional processing of essences, with the smelling information providing positive and negative feedback in the associative learning process. Brain imaging studies have found that activation of the amygdala correlates with pleasant and unpleasant odors, reflecting the link between odors and emotions.

The hippocampus, which is also closely linked to the sense of smell, assists with the learning process and is associated with memory, specifically experiential episodes. This is how a specific smell can stimulate the retrieval of a specific memory.

Optimizes Vocal Effort

It is important for anyone who speaks, or sings, for a living – teachers, presenters, news and sports broadcasters, leadership roles – to maintain nasal breathing during their everyday life, including exercise, rest and sleep.

The voice relies upon many functions. Sound is a vibration of the vocal cords. This physical and physiological activity is optimized with proper nasal passage health. A plugged nose makes the pressure distribution for sound much more on the vocal folds. The vocal cords rely heavily on the health of the nasal passages for the proper pressure distribution. With a stuffy nose the vocal cords can be more susceptible to pressures and forces that can cause irritation and inflammation. In addition, nasal breathing naturally humidifies, warms and filters incoming air. This prevents contraction of the tissues inside the throat due to cold, dry and polluted air. Therefore, breathing through the nose can help reduce the vocal effort required during speech.

Harmonize Vocal Sounds

The vocal folds, or chords, rely upon the nose for proper distribution of forces and pressures when they vibrate to make sound. The rate of vibration determines the frequency, which are perceived by the ear as specific sounds, tones, and rhythms. This may often be referred to as a resonance with the nasal passages. Compare your own voice with clear nasal passages vs. a stuffy nose voice. There tends to be a hollow, monotone and shallow sound to the voice when the nasal passages are not clear. In addition, the nose provides moisture that is specific to lubricating the vocal fold tissues.

Article by Shawn M Flot, MPT. He is now a Certified Oxygen Advantage® Instructor. Combined with his 25year experience in Exercise Physiology, Physical Therapist for health and performance, and a dedicated Yoga practitioner is making for a power-house to help many people succeed in re-discovering their own health, healing and well-being.

The truth about your breathing – the diaphragm Part 2

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Breathing is based on the ability to exchange gases. This exchange is accomplished by pressure and fluid dynamics.

The vital exchange of what is in the outside air, and the process of those essential ingredients for you to survive, AND to live efficiently in all activities you do. Health doesn’t happen. Health is a uncovering to continuously reveal the powers and capacities behind how you roll in life with your body and mind. And this requires Oxygen.

Oxygen is a gas.
And so is Nitric Oxide.
These are two very important essentials for life to be energized and supported. One is from outside and one is produced inside the lining of your nose.

The other gas of importance in the exchange for life is Carbon Dioxide – a byproduct of your energy production.

So why you ask is the diaphragm important in this process called Respiratory Physiology?

Because gas moves to and from by pressure, availability and permeability.

And when the diaphragm contracts before you engage with your inhalation. I hope you picked this up! Your diaphragm begins to contract BEFORE you ride the incoming breath, or consciously engage with the incoming air. This contraction sets up a cascade of actions by other muscles, tissues, joints and vessels based on a pressure gradient.

The diaphragm creates a larger space in the rib cage where your lungs are. As the diaphragm contracts:

  • it moves down,
  • muscles in between the ribs assist in up-lifting (a bucket handle analogy is often used for the ribs).
  • neck muscles assist in anchoring/stabilizing the head on the neck, and mobilizing the neck and upper ribs.
  • the spine “elongates” or flattens its curves - the upper spine, or thoracic spine, lessens it’s backward curvature = kyphosis, and the low back, or lumbar spine lessens it’s forward curvature = lordosis.
  • the glottis contracts to generate a pressure gradient so air doesn’t escape (or go into the lungs). My friend Mary Massery’s studies into the “pop can dynamic of postural control” is brilliant in another awe of the diaphragm’s potential in human development, mobility and movement.
  • the dilator muscle of the throat, in the pharynx and laryngeal region, contract to open up the airway.
  • membranes of the small air sacs, alveoli – “grapes”, and lower smaller airways dilate (with the help of Nitric Oxide) for greater profusion across a barrier – the endothelial layer – for gas exchange.
  • the pelvic floor moves downward to accommodate for the building internal pressure of the abdomen and pelvic cavities.
  • certain parts of the blood circulation gain pressure, while other parts decrease pressure to accommodate for the powerful force of the blood; and this is influenced by the diaphragm, the connective tissues around all organs and other tissues for proper fluid dynamics.

And all of these coordinated activities like a symphony, create a maximal function for the outside air to move into all the spaces of the lungs with the greatest ease and least amount of energy required. Yes breathing is one of the energy consumers of your body.

The most important factor is the diaphragm’s contraction creates greater space. With greater space the pressure inside your lungs – which is already sub-atmospheric pressure, meaning it is less than the pressure outside. With an increase in pressure gradient, air moves easier along the gradient from higher to lower. This allows for the greatest efficiency of breathing to occur. And this is true in the opposite way to easily and efficiently release what is not needed in the system as eliminating from the lungs.

I hope you can begin to appreciate what all happens in the act of each breath you are given. All the above mentioned drive all activities in coordinated functions. And the health of each cell, and each tissue function, is dependent on this very important cascade of actions.

Did you know that they way you breathe can be affecting the health of your spine – neck, upper back and low back – too?

Contact me for a full-system approach to how your breathing impacts your health and well-being.

Why relaxing down enhances your flexibility

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If the well is distant, its water does not quench the thirst of the pilgrim – Chinese Proverb

Your health is being flexible, and your flexibility is not about how your stretch……it’s about how you descend to harness fluidity in your tissues and your mind. Just like in the desert, or in the mountains, the well-spring of nourishment is always found in the hollows of the earth – the canyon, the mountain, the well.

How do you harness your fluidity? You learn to descend within the body. My teacher, Shandor Remete, from the beginning, guided us to cultivate the ability to descend our energy by the proper use of how you move your body. So much of life triggers us to ascend upward – for example:

  • The overuse of the eyes and the brain.
  • A surprising and often frightening sensation of pain
  • Being “ready” for what’s expected or ahead of you
  • Holding yourself upright to maintain a “good” posture
  • elevate your mind for clear thoughts.

This is in contrast to the actual nourishing element of water that keeps us flexible, mobile, and agile. The higher you live, the more distant the access to the balancing mechanism that promotes dynamic fluidity. Water travels down the mountain, down the canyon, and eventually to the ocean. The physiological processes are related to natural phenomena – as in the natural wild world, so inside the wilderness of your body.

Dripping water can eat through a stone – Chinese Proverb

The “region” of the body that relates to the downward force to access the elemental nature of water, consists of approximately 70% of your total body. It represents – the back body – from the tuft of the skull to the heels; and the front body – from the navel to the front of the ankle. The gross body part, anatomical, that relates to the water element is the feet. The ankles are referred to as “the regulators of all fluids in the body” (wisdom given to me by both my Hatha Yoga teacher, Shandor Remete; and my Manual Therapy teacher, Frank Lowen).

What practices can you “exercise” to harness your fluidity? Good question.

Avoid Stretching what you think is tight.

Shocked? Consider how long you have been stretching to feel flexible? Now consider how much strain and stress you are putting on those pinpoint focused areas you feel are tight, without the aide of harnessing your fluidity. Your:

  • bottoms of your feet (plantar fascia)
  • calves (gastrocs, soleus)
  • thighs – front (quadriceps); back (hamstrings)
  • low back (quadratus lumborum, back extensors, spine)
  • hips – front (iliopsoas); back (glutes, piriformis)
  • shoulders (rotator cuff)
  • chest (pectoralis group)
  • neck and skull (trapezius, suboccipitals)

Some of you even contract one muscle group to stretch the apposing. Or you contract the muscle group you want to stretch, then relax to stretch it (cuz you think it fatigues that you can pull it apart more). Well, I am here to say…….

That is a lot of energy consumed to get a short term result. Doesn’t last. In fact the moment you return to your life that engages your up-ness. POOF! gone….you are back to being tight and probably feel more stiff than before you stretched.

Stretching, in my clinical experience is unnecessary stress and strain without the essential ingredient of dynamic fluidity. It is like a rubber band that snaps back. Consider the material – a rubber band, a piece of taffy – what happens when it is dry, frayed, or cold? It usually doesn’t have the same pliability, and if you are using a rubber band, I am certain you ignored that one or threw it away; or if it was the only one you had to use (you don’t have another hamstring) you were cautious to not overstretch because it break, and snap. Ouch, that end that snapped to my finger was painful. Ouch, I just “tore” my hamstring stretching in yoga class. And more subtly, your body is sensing undo stress and strain with it’s signals of ouch, protects by tightening (kinda like how your protecting brace when you know something potentially harmful is coming, or experienced) and tries to brunt the brute force attack by trying to stretch.

Learn how to use your feet and your ankles. And learn how to descend through squatting.

Yes squatting. It’s not what you think. Did you mind go to the power lifter in the gym squatting 300 lbs.? Admit it, you hesitated if you have read this far. You squat every day, many times a day. How many times do you sit down, and get up from a chair? How many times do you sit down to toilet? How many times do you lower yourself to get something? My suggestion is to use your every day activities to give yourself the opportunity to feel, discover, learn and integrate what you feel, or how you are guided to descend, that delivers a life benefit of the skill of descending to find your flexibility.

I will be discussing more details on this important topic in the weeks and months to come. Stay tuned.

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