We can nigh on measure everything these days. Our watches tell us how well we slept. They tell us whether we're stressed, how many steps we've done, how recovered we are and even whether today is a good day to exercise. Somewhere along the way we've become experts at measuring ourselves, and beginners at listening to ourselves.
Breathing feels like another example. The Internet is full of breathing techniques, apps, nose strips, mouth taping, carbon dioxide tolerance tests and the latest way to optimise your nervous system. Every few months someone tells us we've been breathing incorrectly all along.
Don’t get me wrong - as a yoga teacher, I know there is enormous value in learning specific breathing techniques. Pranayama can influence energy, concentration and the nervous system in remarkable ways. Singers and actors train their breath. Swimmers and other athletes train their breath too. People with respiratory conditions are often taught how to breathe more efficiently. All of those people are practising breathing for a reason. I'm more interested in the thousands of breaths the rest of us take every day without giving them a second thought.
We take around 20,000 breaths every day, but unlike our heartbeat or digestion, breathing is one of the few functions we can step into and consciously change. And yet we barely give it a thought. Here’s a little experiment. Try this and then answer the questions at the end.
Before we begin...
If you have a blocked nose try this
1. Inhale.
2. Exhale and pinch your nostrils closed.
3. Hold your breath while gently moving your head from side to side.
4. Hold for as long as feels comfortable.
5. Release your nose and slowly inhale through your nostrils.
Repeat up to three times if needed. Hopefully it worked, if so, you're ready for the experiment.
A Five-Minute Breathing Experiment
If you can, lie on the floor with your calves resting on a chair or sofa. Rather like an astronaut. If that's not practical, simply sit comfortably in a chair. Set a timer for five minutes. (If you have a little longer, try ten.) That way you won't keep checking the time.
Now begin counting slowly in your mind.
Inhale for six seconds.
Exhale for six seconds.
Continue breathing quietly through your nose.
Don't worry about taking the biggest breath you can. In fact, quite the opposite. Let it stay comfortable. Soft. Unforced.
That's it. For the next five minutes your only job is to breathe in for six seconds and out for six seconds. When the timer finishes, don't rush to stand up. Simply notice.
How does your body feel?
Has anything changed physically?
Has your mind become quieter?
Do you feel exactly the same?
Just notice.
Then come back and read the rest.
For a few minutes, there was nothing to measure. There was only something to notice.
Why might this work?
Is the result what you expected? I know when I did it, I hate to admit it seeing I am oh-so-yogi-and-zen like, I didn’t think it would calm me as much as it did.
Then I came across something I wasn’t expecting. Long before anyone had laboratories, heart rate monitors or knew anything about the nervous system, people from completely different parts of the world seemed to have arrived at almost exactly the same breathing rhythm.
The Catholic prayer, the Ave Maria.
The Buddhist mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.
The chanting of Om.
Japanese, African, Hawaiian, Native American, Buddhist, Taoist and Christian traditions all seem to have developed remarkably similar breathing rhythms. Coincidence? Or did generations of people simply notice what made them feel calmer, more focused and more at peace?
It turns out that modern research points in exactly the same direction. Researchers have found that one of the most beneficial breathing rhythms appears to be around 5½ breaths per minute - roughly six seconds breathing in and six seconds breathing out, exactly what you've just been doing.
Researchers weren't actually studying prayer. They were investigating something else entirely when they noticed that people reciting the Ave Maria in its original Latin naturally settled into a ten-second rhythm. Curious, they compared it with a Buddhist mantra and found exactly the same thing.
That observation led to a series of experiments. Volunteers were connected to monitors measuring heart rate, blood flow and nervous system activity while reciting both prayers. Whenever participants settled into this slower breathing rhythm, blood flow to the brain increased, heart rate became steadier, and different systems within the body became more synchronised. When they returned to ordinary conversation or spontaneous breathing, those effects gradually faded.
The researchers wondered whether, long before stopwatches or breathing apps existed, prayers and mantras had simply become an easy way of teaching people to breathe slowly without asking them to think about their breathing.
It made me think of yoga. Traditional pranayama wasn't measured in seconds either. Breath ratios were often timed by mentally repeating Om or another mantra. Before watches and metronomes, this was a simple way of creating a consistent rhythm.
Is it the breathing... or the prayer?
Reading all of this raised another question for me. Were these changes happening because people were breathing more slowly? Or because they were praying?
The honest answer is that we don't really know. The original study compared the Ave Maria with a Buddhist mantra and found remarkably similar physiological changes. That suggests the breathing rhythm itself plays an important role.
But human beings are rarely that simple.
For someone with a deep religious faith, prayer is far more than a way of slowing the breath. It may bring comfort, hope, gratitude, connection or a sense of surrender. All of those things are likely to influence how we feel too.
Perhaps it's a little like listening to music. One person hears a pleasant tune. Another hears the song that was playing when they fell in love. The sound is identical, but the experience is completely different.
Breathing may be similar. The rhythm itself appears to have measurable effects on the body. But for some people, the words, the meaning and the intention may add another layer that science finds much harder to measure.
One clue came from later research. Doctors Patricia Gerbarg and Richard Brown explored the same breathing pattern without any prayer at all. They used it with people experiencing anxiety and depression, and later with survivors of 9/11 who had developed chronic respiratory problems after inhaling debris from the collapsed buildings. Again, they found encouraging results.
That doesn't mean prayer has no effect. It simply suggests that the breathing rhythm itself may play a much larger role than we once thought.
The Perfect Breath?
Personally, I don't think there is a "perfect" breathing technique. There are so many, and each has a different purpose.
What seems far more important to me is learning to notice your own breath and understanding what it might be telling you. Sometimes it tells you you're rushing or you're anxious or you're tired. And sometimes, it doesn't need fixing at all. It just needs a few quiet minutes and a little attention.
We live in a world that's become very good at measuring us. Maybe what we've lost is the ability to notice ourselves. Twenty thousand breaths every day. Perhaps one or two of them are worth noticing.
Photo by Tadeusz Lakota on Unsplash