Transcript: Breath Rate, Anxiety, and the Return to Safety

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So our breathing reflects how we feel. So if a person is feeling very stressed, their breathing tends to be too quick, too shallow. They might even be holding their breath. A lot of people hold their breath when they feel pressure. So that's what's happening to us when we're feeling pressure and we feel pressure all the time. That's a part of being a human. But over prolonged periods of time. Go on. Do you want to ask it and jump in? I was going to say is it fair to say that often in those situations these things are happening but people are unaware of them. Yeah. I mean you might say to someone you're holding your breath they go I don't unless I mean you are sure I'm very aware of I'm sure you're very aware of it because we've been trained in the awareness is how the importance of their breath but I think many people just because they've been the first thing they did was breathe. I think they get into stressful situations and they might necessarily notice those changes that are clear as day to you. Yeah. And they might notice them honestly for decades, you know. So this breathing or ever, you know, our body, our nervous system is always learning again how to breathe. So every day it's learning to breathe again. So if we are constantly feeling pressure, constantly feeling this kind of difficult situations are we start to breathe like that slowly over time and that becomes our way of breathing. So a person could be breathing in a really shallow way without even thinking about or noticing it as you said and this has

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a this has a really detrimental effect on on their health. that if we take a step back and look at it again, how we breathe is how we feel. So in moments of really kind of calmness in their life, they might be in a difficult situation, they come home, something happens and they feel that they can unwind and they feel calmer. If they paused there for a second and listened to their breathing, they'd notice that their breathing was soft, gentle, light, even, you know, you even even quite soft as I said. But you, sorry to jump in, but you said something earlier. You said about people under stress, their breathing becomes shallow. And yet I'm sure you've noticed this as well, but sometimes when I'm in a deep meditation, my breath becomes so fine. So yeah, my breath becomes so shallow. But yet in a stressful situation, you also So I'm wondering how do you define shallow then? Because in stress also people can can hold on to their breath. There's often a rapid pace to the breathing in stress. If you listen to someone in stress, it might be shallow. Like when you're in deep meditation, it's nearly like the breathing stops. Like in really deep meditation, nearly like it stops. No, of course it doesn't. No. But in in fight or flight, in emergency, it's rapid breathing. The body's breathing quite rapidly in order to to

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give us this sense of stress, to give us small breaths. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. So the beauty of it is that we don't have to think about our breathing. It happens all the time. So about 20, 000 times a day, our breathing happens automatically. And it becomes fast, it comes slow, it comes deep. All these 20, 000 times a day. I'm sure you know the maths. How many breaths is that a minute? How do you know? I try I assume you know the number do that calculation. Yeah. Okay. But whatever that number is, ideally we if we're breathing about four, five, six breaths a minute, that's where the body is in this coherent state. The majority of people are are breathing in a much faster way. So really, the breathing is like a mirror. If we were to look into that mirror, the breathing would show us how we're feeling, what's going on deep in the body, and that reflects what's going on in the mind as well. Now the good news is that we have with practice control over how we breathe. So let's say we're in a really difficult situation. We are feeling threatened by something. Our breathing is out of control. In that moment we have a choice. We can decide if we have the skills to focus on our breathing. Just even listen to it. And in in that focus and listening the breathing begins to slow down. And then if we have a little bit

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more experience, we can start to consciously slow the breathing down focusing on the exhales for example. And in those moments then the heart rate starts to slow down. The the body starts to move into this part of the nervous system where we feel safe and then eventually we feel calm. And this is where the massive health benefits are from breathing. Because when we are breathing in a way where we feel safe and calm again, then the body can start to rebuild itself. Then it can start to restore itself. So even if a person is in a highly highly uh difficult life, you say they have a job that puts them under pressure all the time. Even if they take five or 10 minutes when they get back to where they work or wherever it is and they just do some breathing for five or 10 minutes, that brings them out of emergency back into this place where the nervous system is coming on again. And that is essential for our health because when we're in survival mode, the body is pushing all the resources into dealing with whatever the pressure is. It's not focusing on rebuilding. So we need these moments during our day where we focus in our breathing just a little bit and that brings us down out of this fight or flight and it allows the body then to restore itself. Otherwise our immunities in fight or flight it's like our immunity is kind of turned off. I'm sure people have had those situations over maybe a few weeks where things have been hectic and then

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they get sick at the end of the two weeks, you know. So a little bit of breathing is so important by reducing the levels of stress and anxiety, moving us down into the part of the nervous system where we feel safe and we feel calm again. That and that enables us to to rebuild and to restore ourselves and then our health improves, then our sleep improves, then our focus improves. I you talked about this four to six breaths a minute and I want to talk to you a little bit about coherent breathing but I just want to catch something else before it slips from from my mind. Um this this we'll call this slow shallow breathing whatever you want to call it. four, five, six breaths a minute where we drop in and if we practice this calm emerges in our mind and in in our body so and is that then our natural state and if that is our natural state where did that change for us I mean what was the transition what if that's our natural state. Why don't we all just naturally breathe that way? I don't know. Do children breathe that way? Is Is there a point where you I mean we all Do we learn a bad habit somewhere? I know we're we're unaware of it. So I I you say you grew up with hippie parents, but maybe your

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parents weren't aware of this. Mine certainly weren't. So is there a lack of awareness? And is it something natural that at some stage goes offkilter and now we need to take responsibility for it to realign it? So I think we the natural state I think we are built to be in two opposing states at different times. Yeah. So there's this great kind of story of the cave, you know. So, our ancestors when they were in the cave, we were safe and our breathing was nice and relaxed and our digestive system was working and we were in this um rest and digest phase of the nervous system. That's one state of of humankind. When we leave the cave and we're outside and we're immediately scanning for danger and we're hunting and gathering or we're being hunted, our other state is this high awareness, high energy survival state. And we're also built to be like that for short bursts of time. So I think we we exist in these two polar opposites and and you know a spectrum in between that. I think maybe where we've gone a little bit ary is that people don't have the cave to return to as much anymore. They might be at home where they should be starting to unwind, but every time we pick this little thing up and we scroll, it starts to trigger the fight or flight. So, it's just having

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this this balance between high alert and deep breath. So, that's one part. So, I don't think it's like I don't think it's a problem. We we definitely shouldn't be absolutely calm all the time. That's not we need both. Yeah. Both. But back to the other part of your question was, you know, did something change along the lines? And I have four teenagers now, but I was I used to watch them when they were babies. And when we're small, we breathe in this beautiful way. It's called natural breathing. The belly expands, draws down the diaphragm. We breathe in our whole body. And the exhale is just a release. And you you watch children very young and they breathe with their whole body like that and as they reach about six or seven and as they become more aware of themselves and more aware of their surroundings I'm sure if you have you know young people in your life as well you'll see and we also experience you become more aware of what people say about you what people you know the the surrounding pressures the more we start to feel external pressures the more that changes our breathing. So about eight or nine or 10 or 11 as we grow up and we start to become more aware of our surroundings and our place in it, our breathing changes. And if we if that scenario is quite quite um pushes us into a place where we feel threatened or stressed, our breathing can get a little bit tighter, a little bit higher in the chest, a little bit faster. Now,

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we can come in and out of that, but for some people, that state of of breathing quite quickly in a kind of stressed way can stay with them then for the rest of their life. It can stay with them for 20 or 30 years. You know, when I'm teaching people to breathe out, often it's a return to breathing like we did, you know, but there's a reason like we grow up, we have responsibilities, we have things to solve, we have places to go. So again we we need to exist within these two polar opposites the action and the relaxation you know the the survival and then the the restoration as well. So there's nothing wrong with these bursts of of difficult situations. We just need to learn the skill of being able to come back out of it. We have to come back out of it. We yeah we don't want to stay there. And I think that analogy of leaving the cave explains a lot because I suppose if we go back thousands of years ago, we left in the hunter gatherer time, we we left the cave to uh kill for food. And when you're doing something that you know, whatever it is you're chasing, you do, you know, you you don't want to be in this cam rested state. You need to heighten senses because a very dangerous situation. But once you've killed your prey and you bring them back um and now you I suppose naturally we would have dropped back into the rested state then we had our food and we weren't

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surrounded by email, mobile phones, TVs, tablets all so we moved into a stiller environment. So I suppose that makes sense in saying that neither are wrong but maybe we're overusing them now because we're in a world of we at that stage we were in a world of temporary stimulation and now we're in a world of continuous stimulation and a guest I interviewed just before you a couple of days ago Dr. Michael Keane and he's a neuroscientist and he I can't remember the expression he used but something to the effect that that you know our our minds haven't caught up with the you the mind we're using and the body we're using it hasn't because the world changed so fast our minds just haven't caught up yeah with where we are now because just things have changed so rapidly within such a short period of time with maybe it's decades maybe it's a hundred years but from an evolutionary stand point that is way too fast for us to adjust to a new environment. Yeah. Like we are built to survive very harsh conditions and that's what we've done for millions of years to get to this point where you and I can have this chat across the internet like this. So we are sitting in these bodies that are built like that and these brains that are built like that and all of a sudden we've had these massive social changes and it's going to take the human brain and the human body a long time to adjust to that you know but

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I think there is a change also in our perception of of this problem. I think people are trying to find a balance now with the level of distraction in their life. I think people are realizing, some people are realizing that they can't continuously live in a constantly distracted world. They need time back in the cave. One of the things you also mentioned was how this can change for maybe in the teenagers or maybe it's 8 n 10 when we begin to move out the childhood behavior and we're moving into our teens towards adulthood and we become aware of our environment and our breathing changes. Uh, so I suppose as far as I'm aware, you've specifically studied this area of of how it it impacts and teenagers. And I'd like to hear a little bit about that because it seems to me that it would be a really impactful um intervention to catch children at that age and begin to train them in I suppose two things. One is you label what's happening for them. So you identify so they become aware of the shift that's happening and you give them a skill because when you're at that age you don't know what's changing and you don't have the skill to do anything about it but no one around you has that skill. So um you might talk about a

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little bit what you do there because I think that's uh that could be really important. Yeah. So we have a breath work academy called the blissful breath academy and as part of that we have worked with quite a few schools secondary and primary schools and we actually have a good few teachers who are by by profession teachers um better teachers who are also primary school or secondary school teachers and really what we're trying to do is we're trying to get into the classrooms and also train the primary and secondary school teachers and these are very simple very effective ways of breathing that as you say help people to deal with these massive massive changes that go on with within themselves and around them. And what we've found over the last few years is when we're teaching adults, adults have so many hang-ups about, you know, is it the right thing to do? Am I doing it correctly? Does it work? All these things. What we found with teenagers and and children is they just take to it so easily because it just helps them. They feel it helps them and you know so they need less of it. So you know what we might say 10 minutes of breathing for an adult like a minute or two of breathing with children and teenagers changes how they feel so quickly. And some of the schools that we've been in, the teachers have come back to us and said, you know, we do a little bit of breathing at the start of of the day and the difference it makes for the rest of the day is unbelievable. The children are more

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content. They're calmer. They're able to focus more. And I think there is a change in the schools. Yoga is in schools. Mindfulness is in schools. We're getting breath work into schools. And I think a lot of schools are very open to it because again I think it come my job becomes easier when there's a real need for it and and after co many teachers are struggling with the effects of the isolation and things that happen to the children and teenagers and it's still cropping up years after co. So they're looking for ways of dealing with this and as well the it seems may maybe it maybe it's not true but it seems that the pressure on say teenagers for exams and things like that is also very high. So again teachers are looking for simple tools that help them and the teenagers deal with it. So for us now that's a big focus because like you said the future will be very bright when the children and teenagers of Ireland and the rest of the world have these very simple tools that they can use just to help them feel a little better you know because growing up is very difficult at times and if they have a tool that helps them just come back down to themselves and it's so empowering for them to think that okay this difficult thing is happening I can focus on my exhale for three exhales and I feel better. That's hugely empowering for them because it gives them something in the midst of the pressure to hold on to. Yeah, it's it's powerful. Um I I have

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three sons are adults now and they they all went to a rugby school and um one of them loved rugby and the other two did not. Um but the interesting thing was that after school every day there was training was compulsory for an hour. Compulsory. Now, you didn't have to. Rugby was was what the school was about, but if you didn't do rugby, you could train and do you could do something else, but it was compulsory. School finished and it was an hour. And I remember thinking to myself that it's a really powerful thing they're doing because if you go to school, whatever age they were, and they went to school, I don't know, 12 or 13. It was secondary school. And you're in there until you're 17 years of age. And every day, five days a week, you train for an hour. You are creating this habit. And then you're 17, 18, you leave. Whatever you do, the your likelihood is now this is what I do. I train. You I train consistently. And we know that exercise has like is the magic pill. It's a massive impact. And so when I was looking at this, I was thinking like the the skill they're giving to these children going into rest life is massive. And I think this is something equally or sorry not equally, even more powerful because if you take kids through their schooling years and you teach them this skill, by the time they get to adults, they just they won't think about it anymore. They won't. It's just it you'll have given them this

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incredibly powerful skill that that will transform the I was blessed that when I was 17 18 years of age I learned meditation and it transformed my life without question. It took me into a different path. So um I'm not trying to sign everyone up for meditation but it's it's similar. If you learn a skill like this, that skill is I mean it's enormously powerful.