Reboot Your System

Most of us begin to slide downhill shortly after breakfast. Slowly at first but DOWN even so. Bad hair day. Ragged shallow breathing. Traffic jam. Clenched jaws. Cranky boss. Tight throat. High-pitched voice.

By lunch you feel like a giant knot with legs and a headache. Mounting tension makes you sound more like Minnie Mouse than your usual resonant self. Although this is a typical day for the typical professional, the gradual hour-to-hour build-up of physical, emotional and intellectual tension robs your energy, weakens your concentration and waters down your incredible business instincts.

You can find yourself weary and cranky with hours of grinding work still ahead. It is understandable that you go for a quick energy boost of a double espresso and a big chocolate chip cookie. Unfortunately, sugar and caffeine jazz you up and then slam you down.

What we need is a true “reset” that quickly washes away the accumulated tension leaving you fresh for another few hours. It is important to return to “default” mode EVERY FEW HOURS. A true reset must be quick, portable and without side effects.

1. Stand and stretch your body from stem-to-stern.
2. If you are working under artificial lights, try to change your light source, even if only a couple minutes.
3. Empty out your stale air comfortably. Take a few deep slow fresh breaths.
4. Close your eyes and lay your palms over your eyes for a few moments.

There you are, good as new. Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Easy Come Easy Go

Lung tissue has a full-time job just getting oxygen out of the incoming air and into your blood stream while it simultaneously grabs up the spent fuel from the blood so that can be dumped from the body.

It is left to your breathing muscles to actually move air into and out of the body. Muscles and lung tissue of course take orders from the brain where a second-by-second record is kept on exactly how much oxygen is needed by each muscle and body process at any given moment. A pretty fancy dance when you think about it. The brain sends orders for faster or slower breathing down to the respiration department.

A double layer of intercostals muscles is sandwiched between each pair of ribs and the big elastic diaphragm stretches across the bottom rim of your ribcage. To draw a breath in, the intercostals lift and swing your ribs gently out and up while the diaphragm flattens down. This effort creates a slightly enlarged ribcage. Fresh oxygen-rich air rushes in from outside the body to fill this new vacuum (similar to the action of a syringe or a bellows).

To exhale, the intercostals and the diaphragm simply relax and collapse. The ribs drop down out of the upward flare while the diaphragm rises to its domed-up resting position. This overall relaxation results in a slightly smaller ribcage with smaller capacity. There is no place for the contained air to go but out. Exhalation is simply a letting go of the breathing muscles without slumping the spine. Inhalation is active. Exhalation is letting go of that action.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

After The Crisis

Slowing down your rapid breathing is like pumping your car brakes to come to a gradual, controlled and safe stop. If you are racing to catch a bus you will, of necessity, breathe hard and fast for the moment because your body demands that extra measure of oxygen. However, if you find your heart racing when you are doing nothing at all, it is time for a chat with your doctor. Rapid breathing to accommodate activity is part of your inherited innate fight-or-flight ability to survive.

Unfortunately, there are so many aggravations and pressures in your professional and personal life that, too often, the body sometimes can’t perceive that the actual crisis is over. Your muscles remain tense for hours and your breathing stays shallow and fast. Eventually the brain accepts rapid shallow breathing and residual tension as the norm!

This unproductive post-crisis tension screws with your body’s chemistry. Eventually the system that was designed to protect you begins to eat you alive.

As always, change begins with awareness. This week, pay attention to how your ribcage expands. How fast are you breathing? How do you breathe when your supervisor is talking to you? How do you breathe when the line in the bank is moving too slowly? How do you breathe when a stranger is rude to you? Your homework this week is simply to BE AWARE OF WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOUR BREATHING.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Toss Pills Into A Puddle

What does breathing have to do with eating or taking pills? Remember that your descending food tube (esophagus) and your descending air tube (trachea) are basically Siamese twins. They descend more or less in tandem from the back of your mouth to deep down into your chest. When you irritate one tube, you generally annoy the other.

A tiny swallow of water will probably float your pills as far downstream as your second shirt button. Your job is to get those marbles ALL the way down, OUT of the esophagus and INTO your stomach. The esophagus doesn’t take kindly to having stuff stuck along the way. You risk spasm or rupture and that threatens your breathing!

Take a few swallows of water FIRST before the pills and then take your pills so that you are sending your pills down into “a puddle.” Chase the pills with a full glass of water. Remember, “Puddle Before Pills.”

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Upgrade Your Phone Tone

Tone trumps content. The way you sound hits a listener’s brain first and only then do they process with what you say. Perhaps our primitive ancestors didn’t have the luxury of the lengthy chat but had only a split-second to evaluate the mood and intent of a potential adversary. Since the era of the caveman, communication has evolved into a powerful and beautiful tool but the old split-second analysis is still with us and perhaps for good reason.

Obviously, if you work the phones professionally, it is absolutely essential that your phone presence be outstanding. You may be the only direct contact a client will ever have with your company. How you sound affects how much the client/customer trusts you, likes you and is willing to listen to you.

Even when you speak to your mom, your neighbor or your banker, tone matters! Everyone has to get past your sound before they will open up to your brilliant content. Remember that speech is only as good as the breathing that supports it.

1. NEVER rush to answer the phone and always take your time with your greeting.
2. BEFORE you respond, EXHALE as much air as is comfortable.
3. Take in a SLOW deep breath and answer.
4. Keep your chin tilted slightly upward.
5. Use an old radio announcer’s trick and smile a little while you are talking.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

LINK: True Voice

Review #2

How long should I continue a breathing exercise?
You can stay with it for as long as you feel mentally and physically comfortable. Working mindlessly is a waste of your time and does not honor the subject. If you lose focus, stop. Rest a few moments and begin again. This isn’t a race. It's an adventure.

How long should I wait after a meal to practice my breathing exercises?
Remember the diaphragm (your main breathing pump) is stretched directly over top of your stomach. I suggest that you give your food the right-of-way for a couple hours after a full meal. Both your digestion and your respiration are incredibly complex processes. Each needs to take its turn at center stage.

How do I find a proper breathing rhythm?
Unless otherwise suggested, allow your breathing rhythm to be set by your brain. Your natural feelings take into account the ever-changing needs of your body and mind. Breathing by the numbers dictated by someone else is like painting by the numbers. . . a respectable way to pass the time, requiring only that you follow orders.

Ancient Wisdom: There is no need to push the river. It will flow by itself.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

LINK: Review #1

Organs, Lobes And The Diaphragm

In addition to the intercostal muscles between the ribs, the multiple-muscled diaphragm stretches like a complex, elastic floor across the bottom of your ribcage, and serves as the most powerful and important breathing tool you have. Now your bony cage, with its strategically placed muscles, has become a powerful pump, able to move air in and out of your body on command.

The elusive muscle floor of the diaphragm attaches around the bottom rim of the ribcage and to the waist-level lumbar spine at the rear. This big diaphragm serves simultaneously as the elastic floor of your ribcage, and the elastic ceiling of your abdominal cage.

The constant rising and flattening action of this powerful sheath as it pumps the air in and out, gently massages the heart and lungs as it rises, and in turn, the stomach, liver, spleen and intestines as it flattens down to pull in new air.

Since the partition of the diaphragm slices more or less horizontally all the way through the standing body, it remains out of sight, and is almost impossible to touch. To further complicate matters, it does not lie flat and neat like the floor of a bucket or a birdcage. At the finish of each exhalation, the relaxed diaphragm resembles a lopsided hill with its high side stretched up over the mound of the large liver on your right.

Inactivity encourages a lazy diaphragm. An active diaphragm is essential for efficient breathing. If you are stuck at a desk, take frequent deep breaths to keep your energy up.

Be well. Breathe beautifully and efficiently.