Moving Into Harmony

MOVEMENT & BREATH: HEALTH - FITNESS - WELLNESS

What is your breath’s healthy range? It can be better!

by

Do you believe that your need to breathe is because you need more oxygen?

Well, actually oxygen is so readily available AND your body’s response to low oxygen doesn’t occur until you reach very low levels of oxygen in the blood. The real stimulus to breathe from your body’s intelligence and actions is due to carbon dioxide.

Yes carbon dioxide, CO2. It’s not a bad gas. It’s the by-product of ALL cellular metabolic process in your wonderfully orchestrated body. The signal comes first from the body, the kidneys, and then triggers the diaphragm to begin contracting to take a breath. The most natural way this is experienced is at rest without the mind watching, and controlling the breath…….sleep, so it’s hard to fully grasp what the body is doing. But there are ways to touch into this dynamic.

I’ll explain after I discuss your health and CO2.

Breathing has two phase, the “inhalation” and the “exhalation.” The inhalation is triggered by CO2. Through a lifetime of bodily and mental adaptions, your tolerance to CO2 in the blood lessens. This leads to an increase in your respiratory response to activities often resulting in over-breathing or hyperventilation. Therefore what you experience when you try to slow down the breath is a feeling of breathlessness. This is a significant impact on your health.

Hyperventilation, or exaggerated ventilatory (breathing) response, is a greater volume of air brought in than what your body needs or requires for its metabolic processes. This lessens your health and your healing capacities. And if you exercise or participant and train in sports, you will plateau with your performance to the activities you want to do. Also this affects mental health.

Here is a video explaining your respiratory response to metabolic need and how easily you could be in a hyper-ventilatory, or over-breathing, state during the day, during meditation or breathwork, during exercise, and even…yes even at night.

AND there is good news!

You can train yourself and regain a broader range of reaction to this drive with a tailored program to progressively improve your body-mind capacities. This is done with everyday breathing “exercises” and physiological stressors with recovery (similar to training to be stronger….you do something to stress the tissue and in recovery hopefully the capacity of those muscles, or your cardiovascular health improves).

AND because its intimately tied to all activities, including your sleep, why not weave it into your daily activities for health?

How do you get started in understanding how you relate and respond to CO2? And, more importantly, how do you know where to begin or what “exercises” to do to improve?

You need to know where you are. This simple measure will be very helpful for developing a tailored program and to know where to weave a breathing practice into your everyday life. Everyday breathing patterns influence your exercise AND sleep.

Here is how you can measure yourself: (this is not a test, or performance measure…this is simply to begin to know where you are)

Want to learn more about how you can harness the power behind each breath you take, and how to make the most out of health program that fits what you want and desire in your life? Check out these opportunities.

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.

Are you really “too busy” for your own well-being?

by

No, but your tell yourself that.

The honest answer that will actually deliver help is to acknowledge – “I am not able to find a way to take care of myself right now.” And saying this with honesty and compassion, rather than from judgement, or shoulds, will potentially lead you in a different direction that actually might stir the hunger for your own value of your own vitality and well-being.

Recent investigations measured the subjects being studied noted that they were thinking about something other than what they were doing……47% of the time……which translates to the subjects not being present to the task at hand 47% of the time…..ALMOST HALF the time…..which translates to half the day is spent not with focus on what one is doing…….NUTS!

So when a vital resource like the breath and how it either serves you and nourishes you, or how it accelerates your unhealthy patterns and diminishes your vitality. If you are unable to attend for moments in your day to what is MOST vital to your health and well-being…..well, you are left with being dictated and overrun by less vital influences and your health will be compromised.

UNLESS you take right action. Bring attention….maybe part of that 47% of the time…….onto the breath and into your body. Then you actually might find access to a resource that truly wants the best for you and your well-being.

Interested?

The truth about your breathing muscle – diaphragm Part 1

by

The diaphragm is the most important muscle in our body. We can’t live without it or mechanical means are necessary to keep you alive. And the diaphragm can perform the important respiratory, or breathing, function with our volitional, or conscious, control and non-volitional, unconscious, function (during sleep especially).

The diaphragm is so vital to our health and well-being. Here are some facts to contemplate what it does for you:

  • is the hardest and most enduring muscle in the human body.
  • it acts whether you are paying attention to your breathing or not. In my personal and clinical experience when attention is elsewhere, the breathing habits take over unless they’ve been practiced and cultivated. This article explains the qualities of a healthy breath to support your physical and mental health.
  • contracting and relaxing at least 21,500 times per day (calculated at 15 breaths per minute – bpm’s, not rpm….haaahaaa, so if you breath more, then its more, and more, and more. If you exercise or are under stress, it’s probably 20-30 breaths per minute…yes can be doubled!
  • 5.5 million breaths per year – at least
  • living to be 85…..then you have taken almost half a trillion breaths to support your long life.
  • during it’s action it makes breathing easier, and during it’s relaxation phase it assists in moving air out of the lungs via pressure dynamics. This article explains breathing from a pressure dynamic to help you to understand the harder you work at breathing the more exhausted you will be.
  • it helps support your posture, and is also affected by your posture. It also aides in stabilizing the spine and transferring forces to/from the limbs during all upright activity.
  • it pumps all the major fluids – lymph and venous blood – back to the heart against gravity and when we are sleeping.
  • it generates a motion and pressure, intra-abdominal pressure, that massages the abdominal organs, and contributes greatly to the fluid exchange for the brain, pelvis and legs.
  • and more (this article lays out all the functions that I have learned over the 30 years of study, personal practice and clinical experiences.

Article by Shawn M Flot, MPT. He is an experienced Certified Oxygen Advantage® Instructor. Combined with his 30 years of 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 and healing, being optimally fit for their adventures and living well.