Your Paced breathing technique

Yoga practice is all about paced breathing technique and simultaneous movement of the body in synchronization to the breathing pattern. In my earlier blog on want a healthy heart? , I did mention the deep breathing pattern for yoga practice.

I quoted a formula

Et > It and typically Et is 1.x of It                 where x = 1 to 9. Typically, Et is 1.5 of It. (Et- Exhale duration and It- Inhale duration)

The above formula is one such example of paced breathing technique. The idea of using the paced breathing is to work internally on our autonomous nervous system (ANS). This is an involuntary automatic system. With the regular practice of yoga even for 20 minutes/day, the behaviour of the ANS can be changed permanently. Most of the physiological parameters such as metabolic rate, heartbeat, blood pressure etc. are controlled by the ANS. At a psychic level, a relaxed calm state can be achieved with the changed ANS.

Someone asked me to give a practical method of doing this practice. I recommend doing the practice in two phases. The first phase is to train the respiratory pathway for this type of deep breathing. For this, I suggest to spend 10 minutes of deep practice in the sitting position. To keep track of your timing of breathing, I recommend using the paced breathing app. This is one such good app where one can change and set the timing durations of inhale & exhale. The durations vary from person to person depending on his lung capacity.

 At any point of the exercise, one should not overstrain the lung. So, find out your deep breathing pattern with your own comfortable inhale and exhale durations. Say, for example if your comfortable It is 4.0 sec and Et is 4.5 sec then program these numbers in the app and continue the practice with this rhythm for 10 minutes. After few days of practice, gradually increase Et insteps of 0.5sec until you can do exercise comfortably with Et of 6.0sec.

In the second phase, add 10 minutes of body mindfulness movement by incorporating set of yoga postures that aid in the distribution of blood throughout the body. Again, use the paced breathing app to pace the breathing duration.

You will see a dramatic shift in ANS that changes one or more of the parameters such as metabolic rate, heartbeat, blood pressure as well as a relaxed calm state. All that you need is a regularity of this 20minutes practice that helps in reprogramming your ANS.

Want a Healthy Heart??

The content of this blog is purely based on my personal experience. I am here to simply share my experience and the experiences of my clients. These are our personal observations and not in any way an illustration describing the benefit of yoga practices on the cardiovascular system.

Breathing & cardiovascular system: The foundation of yoga practice is breathing. The body is moved in complete synchronisation to the flow of breathing. While doing the practice, we use certain specific pattern of breathing. It is not only that we engage the diaphragm muscle by means of abdominal deep breathing but also we consciously force the exhalation duration (Et) and keep it longer than that of inhalation (It).

                              Et > It and typically Et is 1.x of It                

                                                     where x = 1 to 9. Typically, Et is 1.5 of It.

 With regular practice of yoga, I have seen dramatic differences in the physiological behaviour of the cardiovascular system before and after the practices. I noticed these in many of my clients.

The science: Before explaining those parameters, let me first explain the science behind the effect of breathing on the cardio vascular system. A typical breathing cycle consists of three phases: Inhale, retention and exhale. Inhale tones up the sympathetic nervous system and exhale tones up the parasympathetic nervous system. That is why; we feel energised on inhale and relaxed on exhale.

The heart simply follows the rhythm of the breathing pattern. The heart beat increases with inhale and falls back to the normal state on exhale. With regular practice, one can train the heart agreeably with such a simple deep breathing exercise.

The catch: Just a simple deep breathing alone is not sufficient enough to generate the shift in the physiology of the cardio system. The body movement plays a vital role. Flow exercises such as sun salutation enhances the flow of blood throughout the body and that in turn augments the distribution of blood. So combinations of breathing as well as the movement of the body are essential for the shift to occur.

The parameters:

Resting Heart Rate: For an adult, a typical resting heart rate (RHR) is 70 beats/minute (BPM). When I started my yoga practice many years before, my RHR was 90 and above. Now, it has drop down around 55. For many of my clients, I noticed a minimum downward shift of 20 BPM. This indicates that there is an increase in the pumping capacity of heart. Or in other words, the stroke volume of the heart is much better with the practice of yoga.

For athletes, it is natural to have a strong heart muscle because of the physical workouts and they usually have RHR around 50 BPM.

Heart Rate Variability: The heart rate variability ( HRV) is one such parameter which is used in the medical world to determine the health of the heart. With the above yoga practice, again we noticed an average increase in the HRV parameter. With a minute observation the HR varies by a minimum of 10 BPM.

HR recovery (HRR) : The HR recovery  is the recovery time of the heart as it moves towards its normal state after some intense physical workouts. After the practice, our heart jumps to 140 BPM, roughly 70% of the maximum HR. In most of the cases, a 2 minutes relaxation provided a minimum downward shift of 25 BPM. Better will be the health of the heart when the HR recovery is faster.

So, a regular practice of deep breathing combined with movement of the body play a trick to increase the health of the heart.

Young voice of Wisdom:

We live in a world where we are influenced by others as well we influence others. There is another deeper, closer and smaller world for each one of us which we call it as “Family”. This world is much different than the external world. The family relationships are much stronger and the influence on one another in the family is also intense. Here, we have special bonding, love and affection between family members.

Parent Choices and the freedom of the Children: As parent, we want to give the best for our children. Best education, dresses, morals and values. In the process of offering the best, we compromise the thing which we thought is right for our children. What we think is right at this moment was wrong sometimes in our past and in the same way, what we think is wrong now was absolutely right earlier. Such is the dynamism of our choice. Our discrimination of right or wrong comes from our own experience. When we provide the right choice for the children, it is not the true choice that we are offering to them but it is that our experience that is forced on to them. In a way, we are forcing our experience onto the children which prohibits them from having their own very experience in its genuine state of freshness. The children freedom is lost when we make the decision what is best for them.

So, it is important to give the freedom and it should be kept in mind when we take certain choices in the life of the children.

Moral and value for the children: As a parent, do we need to teach the moral and value for the children? Say for example, we want to develop the value of getting up from the bed early morning to our children. One way of doing this to teach them all the benefits of early morning rising. Another method is simply for us to lead in the front the life that we want to teach. The first method will not be effective as the children learn and pick up the habits from the parent subconsciously. Such is the power of the subconscious programming. What you try to teach will not be followed by the children but they follow the one that you really do in your own life.

So, the best way to pass on the values and morals to the children is to simply lead the life that we want our children to have. Take out from your equation the question of teaching/preaching to the children.

Personally, I developed the habit of practicing yoga early morning daily and I thoroughly enjoyed the benefit of yoga. In that process, I did some reverse engineering of my old habits. One such habit is the way how I value the food that I eat. My daughters do not know ABC of yoga. I never talked to them in our personal time about Yoga. But, I noticed my daughter picked up subconsciously the value system of the food and it helped in her physical transformation from a chubby girl to a slim and sleek girl. Such is the effect of us leading in the front instead of preaching/teaching.

Me, Mine and Others: Some of us pay too much attention in the welfare of their children. They pour their entire energy for the family. They don’t even consider their own growth. This is a situation of overkill. To strike a balance, one needs to spend energy equally for his own growth, for his family development and for the benefit of the society. At the later stage of our life, it is our growth and our skills that will be of help to us as well as others.

So, strike a balance the way how you distribute your energy in all the three primary areas: Your personal growth, family and the society.

Once when we offer the true freedom to the children, pass on the values simply by leading the life in the front and equally spending your energy in all the primary areas, it is guaranteed that you listen your wisdom through the young voice of your children.

Use this trick to stay focussed in life?

If you are busy with many different activities in life but still you do not have a clear direction in life then it is a time to do some sort of self-auditing to understand what is happening in you. For doing a self-auditing of your activities, please follow the tool mentioned in my blog on Personal Effectiveness : A self-exploration tour .

Let us consider that you set the goals and have a clear definition of your purpose of life. But, sometimes your daily activities are counterproductive and of “no use” or hindrance to the actual purpose of your life. In such a case, you are simply thrown away everywhere in life & it is a clear sign that you are defocused in life. As per the research, approximately 80% of our daily activities are counterproductive when you become defocused in life.

What is the cause for the defocus? Why your intention and action are polarity opposite to each other?

When you set a goal, you have a very high expectation and you put your heart and soul to achieve the goal. You implement right kind of actions for you to get the desired results. It is quite natural that you expect a directly proportional result based on your action. It takes a beat on your motivational level particularly when the results are not in line with your expectation. There is a direct relationship between the reward centre of the brain and the motivation centre of the brain.

In reality, since the action is brand new to you, the perception level of your action gets magnified. Consider a case that you have not done running at all in life. Now, you are given a task to complete a one KM run. This is a new action to you and it is perceived as a paramount task whereas the same task is perceived simply a meek by a regular runner. Your magnified perception of the action produces a magnified perception of the reward. In reality, this does not happen as the system has a time constant to adapt to the new state. In case of running, your body has a time constant to adapt to the new state.

You get demotivated when you do not understand the magnified perception of the action and the time constant (time lag in getting the result) of the system. In case of demotivation, you get a focus shift where you may drop the current goal and take up a new goal. With the new set goal, the same process repeats again. Over a period of time, this becomes your new habit where your penetration level in achieving the goal stays unfortunately at 10 to 20% level. This is the cause of your defocus and how you are thrown everywhere in life.

Way to stay focus: During the initial phase of goal achieving mechanism, it is important to expect and look for reward with SMALLER magnitude. This activates the reward centre of the brain which in turn triggers the motivation centre of the brain to take further actions. Over a period of time, the brain gets hardwire with this new pattern and hitting a winning streak becomes your new habit. This builds the right momentum in you to take further actions. The compounding effect of the smaller results generates the desired BIGGER result too. With each new action, you have not only progressed one step closer to your goal but you have increased your penetration level in achieving the goal. You stay focused with this smaller shift in your perception of your action and reward.