How to Breathe to Hasten Your Recovery and Get into the Flow State

There is coherence in your nervous system when you are functioning and feeling at your best. Your autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic (fight, flight, or freeze) and parasympathetic (rest, digest) branches are coherent in this situation. When your nervous system detects a match between your skill levels and the difficulty or intensity of a certain task, it is in the pursuit of completing that goal that you will reach this sweet pause. Your nervous system must essentially correspond to that. The yin and yang of the task must gradually rotate without becoming overly relaxed or tense.

You can instantly control your nervous system by breathing. Your body responds sympathetically when you inhale and parasympathetically when you exhale. We may therefore modify our breathing to match the intensity of the work with knowledge and practice of this.

I’m going to discuss five elements in this article that will not only improve your capacity to enter the flow state on a regular basis but will also raise your level of health and wellbeing.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

As absurd as it may sound, the primary issue facing a significant section of the population is overbreathing. Overbreathing is similar to someone hyperventilating constantly without being aware of it. When they are not using their diaphragm and are breathing in and out through their mouths, it seems as if they are breathing in and out of a tight space. This results in what is known as hypocapnia, or a CO2 shortage, which in turn causes cell hypoxia, or low oxygen, to occur.

For oxygen delivery, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are crucial. Your pH levels become acidic (lower) as CO2 levels rise in your body and react with water to generate carbonic acid. Hemoglobin releases oxygen when the pH is lower. As a result, oxygen is released and transported to your muscles and tissues more readily. But the opposite produces, well, the opposite outcome. Hemoglobin will hold onto more oxygen and not let go as CO2 levels drop.

Your CO2 level will drop as a result of overbreathing and hyperventilation, which, as you just learned, will lead to inadequate oxygen delivery. The Bohr effect is the concept that the right amount of CO2 causes hemoglobin to release oxygen.

Posture and The Diaphragm

We now realize that CO2 is our close partner in our achievement in oxygen transport and that it is necessary for accurate, effortless breathing to take shape. Make sure, though, that we inhale as much and thoroughly as possible by focusing on our posture and diaphragm. If you think about how a person with confidence stands up in the midst of a room vs. someone with low confidence, A confident individual will typically stand tall, with shoulders back and down but relaxed, an open chest, a slight drawback of the chin, and hips in a neutral or natural position.The diaphragm is encouraged to breathe easily in this position. A person who lacks confidence will have rounded shoulders, a sunken chest, rotated hips, and a lowered chin when they are standing up. This makes sense because the diaphragm is constricted in a closed position, which naturally causes tension.

Now, to illustrate posture, I only used imagery of confidence and a lack of confidence. However, confident individuals can still have poor posture. My point is that having good posture is crucial to breathing correctly using the diaphragm.

The Diaphragm.

Your main breathing muscle, the diaphragm, can be strengthened through exercise just like all other muscles. At the base of your chest, inside the lower ribs, is a dome-shaped muscle. Your diaphragm flattens and contracts during inhalation to make room in your chest cavity for your lungs to expand. Your diaphragm needs the assistance of your intercostal muscles, which are located between your ribs, to lift your ribs and allow more air to enter your lungs. If the intercostals start to fail, you have a backup set of muscles in the form of the scalenes, which raise the first rib; the pectoralis minor; and the long muscle on the side of your neck called the sternocleidomastoid.

Feel your Diaphragm

Here are two exercises to help you get a sense of how your diaphragm should be properly engaged. The Diaphragm Pump acts as a warm-up for your diaphragm and is a terrific awareness tool for understanding where and how your diaphragm moves, while the Placing the Hands exercise is intended for beginners of diaphragmatic breathing.

Placing the Hands:

1. Place one hand between your belly button and solar plexus, and the other hand on your chest.
2. Close your mouth.
3. Breathe in through your nose and as you do that, allow for your tummy to gently stick out.
4. Breathe out and let your tummy gently draw back into being flat.
5. Repeat this movement without tension.

Diaphragm Pump:

1. Place one hand on your solar plexus.
2. Breathe in through your nose twice.
3. On the exhale, hold your breath and pinch your nose.
4. Now, with your nose pinched and mouth closed, try and breathe through your nose.
5. You will feel your diaphragm contracting.
6. When you feel the urge to breathe, then breathe.
7. Repeat for 3–5 sets.

Nasal Breathing

At the First Medical Institute of Moscow, Konstantin Buteyko began his medical education in Russia in 1946. The monitoring of dying patients’ breathing was a requirement of his training. Buteyko developed a skillfully exact eye for detail that was guided by his intuition, such that he could accurately forecast the time of death for these terminally ill patients to the minute.

Unfortunately, Buteyko was given a 12-month life expectancy at the time of his diagnosis of malignant hypertension, a lethal kind of blood pressure. Buteyko confronted the diagnosis head-on and dove headfirst into the hunt for a treatment with the help of his teachers’ inspiration and support. Nothing came to the surface at that moment.

While Buteyko’s symptoms continued to worsen, his intuition remained unchanged. During a portion of his medical training, he recalled that every patient he watched experienced hyperventilation. In other words, individuals were generally breathing through their mouths, and their breathing was too rapid and forceful. Therefore, Buteyko questioned, “Am I breathing too much?” Instead of remaining in the question, he moved and started to breathe more slowly by first closing his mouth.

Buteyko’s headache, kidney discomfort, and heartache vanished entirely after five minutes of slow nasal breathing. He took five rapid, deep breaths to further solidify this realization, and the pain soon returned.

Many people’s lives were changed by Buteyko’s breathing technique as it battled to break through the scientific community. Patrick Mckeown’s life was among those that were altered, and he has persisted in raising awareness of Buteyko’s efforts. In conclusion, remember to breathe deeply through your nose and slowly.

Nitric Oxide

The molecule nitric oxide was first identified in 1772, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that its significance became clear. Nitric oxide is currently known as the secret weapon of health and performance, although back then it was thought to be a poisonous toxin. Produced by virtually every cell type in your body, this molecule is regarded as the major regulator of blood vessel health.

This is due to the fact that nitric oxide is a vasodilator, which means it relaxes the blood vessels’ internal muscles. As a result, the vessels enlarge, increasing the blood flow.

“In human beings, the nasal airways release nitric oxide. Nasal Nitric Oxide in Man, Lundberg J., Weitzberg E., published in Thorax, 1999. “During inspiration through the nose, this nitric oxide will follow the airstream to the lower airways and the lungs, where it increases the amount of oxygen intake in the blood.”

Therefore, breathing through your nose causes you to consume more oxygen. The more you practice breathing through your nose (until it comes naturally to you), the more oxygen you’re giving your body. As a result, as you may anticipate, this will improve health, recuperation, performance, and presence.

According to the 1994 article Behavioural and Psychological Approaches to Inhaling Disorders, inhaling simply through your nose causes about 50% higher airstream resistance than breathing via your mouth. Your oxygen consumption is therefore increased by up to 20% as a result.

The concentration will depend on the flow rate at which the sample is inhaled because nitric oxide is continually produced in the nasal airways. As a result, nasal nitric oxide concentrations are higher at lower flow levels, according to Lundberg J. and Weitzberg’s 1999 article, Nasal Nitric Oxide in Man.

When 5 becomes 1

Yes, it does sound like a 1990s boy band song. You will, however, be setting yourself up for an improvement in your health and performance if you appropriately incorporate your posture, diaphragm, nasal breathing, nitric oxide, and carbon dioxide levels. Five things to consider could help you organize your thoughts and make a note. Overanalyzing could make overbreathing worse. Fear not; the answer is here. your mouth with tape.

The simplest approach to practicing nasal breathing and working with your diaphragm, nitric oxide, carbon dioxide, and posture is, in fact, using mouth tape. You will unconsciously start breathing correctly after some persistent practice. I advise anyone who is beginning mouth taping for the first time to use Myotape. This type of mouth tape, created by breathing specialist Patrick McKeown, will securely draw the lips together to promote nasal breathing. By covering your mouth with tape, you can start by boosting your confidence. Then you should sleep with your mouth taped in order to really speed up your recovery.