Relaxing Muscles for Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises
(This is Part 2 of Module 10. Buteyko breathing exercises)
This web page provides the safest diaphragmatic breathing exercise (relaxed
diaphragmatic breathing) for people with hypertension and other forms of heart
disease to lower their heart rate (pulse) and gradually reduce their blood pressure.
Bear in mind that most hypertensives, when they have less than 20 s for the body
oxygen test, are not able to get benefits from regular
Buteyko breathing exercises that involve breath holds and reduced breathing.
Healthy people (over 40 s for the CP test or the body oxygen test) naturally have diaphragmatic breathing at rest. This graph below shows the normal breathing pattern. Each cycle has a tiny inhalation (the upward straight lines), exhalation (the curved downward lines) and automatic pause (almost the horizontal lines) accompanied by relaxation of all breathing muscles.
If the CP (body oxygen content) is about 20 s or less, as the case with sick people, the typical breathing pattern is following:
The inhalations are bigger (deeper); breathing is faster (higher frequency);
exhalations are forceful (not
relaxed), and there is no automatic pause.
Warning. It is a serious mistake and waste of time to practice normal breathing if your CP is less than 30 s. Why? People start to breathe deeply, while during normal breathing inhalations are tiny (normal breathing is invisible). Dr. Buteyko noticed this effect over 40 years ago (his quote is few lines below). In fact, you will learn soon that reduced breathing, the main part of the Buteyko breathing exercises, is more shallow and, for sick people, more frequent.
“The breathing [retraining] should be monitored by an instructor who had learned the method himself. Our instruction of 1964 was published in Novosibirsk, 1000 issues. We still were naive and thought that after reading this correct instruction, the patient would be able to reduce breathing and then compare when it is normal. It [the instruction] included the information about normal breathing: 2 s for inhalation, 3 s for exhalation, 3 s for the pause, etc. First, he [the student] starts to breathe deeply, secondly, he immediately tries to fulfill that normal breathing. All [final] effects are the opposite, even [for] a [medical] doctor.” Dr. Buteyko, Public Lecture in the Moscow State University, 1969.
Learning relaxing breathing muscles and diaphragmatic breathing
This big and deep breathing usually makes chest muscles to do the main job of air pumping. Why? Low CO2 content makes the diaphragm tense. Coupled with slouching, restrict diaphragmatic movements making chest breathing the typical feature of people with low CPs.
If you have been using mostly your chest muscles for breathing at rest during last 5-10 or more years, it would take some days or weeks to restore the normal diaphragmatic breathing.
The process of learning to unblock the diaphragm is divided into 4 stages:
Stage 1: Feeling the breath
Stage 2: Relaxation of the body’s muscles
Stage 3: Tensing and relaxing breathing muscles
Stage 4: Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing
Stage 1: Feeling the breath
Focus on your usual breathing for 2-3 minutes at rest while sitting with the straight spine. What do you feel? If the sensations are vague, take a deep slow in-breath and slowly exhale. Do you feel how the airflow goes through your nostrils? Do you have any sensations at the back of your throat? Are there any feelings about movement of air inside the chest and bronchi? What do you sense near your stomach?
Usually, children have good perception about own breathing. Older people
notice fewer sensations. Having these sensations makes the process of learning
easier. However, even if the student feels nothing at all (rare, but possible),
it is still possible to learn the method. How? First, the student can restore
the sensations by doing special exercises and focusing attention on own
breathing. Second, if these exercises do not work, as in very rare cases, the
teacher can use, for the right students, special breathing exercises that do not
need the feeling of own breath.
To restore the sensations of own breath, the following exercises can be used.
1. Put your hands around your waist line, as if embracing yourself, and listen to your usual breathing for about 20-30 seconds. You will be able to detect the movements of the diaphragm.
2. Put your hands slightly above the waist (about 10 cm or 4 inches higher) around your waist and listen to your usual breathing for about 20-30 seconds. You will be able to detect the movements of the rib cage.
In most cases, repeating these exercises a few times will solve the problem. If the sensations are still not present, the student should practice the exercise with the books and exercise with the belt described below.
Stage 2: Relaxation of the body’s muscles
The student is asked to tense some parts of his body muscles and then relax
them. This is usually not a problem for a particular arm or leg, but is more
difficult when more muscles are involved. To learn tension and relaxation of the
whole body gradually, the student can start with some muscles and then add other
groups. For our future goals, the student should be able:
- to tense the whole body and then relax it;
- to tense the upper part of the body (from the rib cage up) and then relax it.
Stage 3: Tensing and relaxing breathing muscles
As a next logical step, the student tries to tense and relax breathing muscles, which we divide, for our purposes, into 2 groups:
- the diaphragm (other names are “tummy”, “belly”, and “stomach”);
- all remaining breathing muscles (other names are “chest muscles”, “rib cage muscles”, and “thoracic muscles”).
Here all these muscles are tensed and relaxed together. In order to achieve success, do the following simple exercise. Close the mouth and stop breathing through the nose (using our throat lock mechanism). Try to take a strong and big inhale, while there is no way for the air to move into the lungs. This helps to achieve a strong sensation of tension in the breathing muscles. Keep the tension for 1-2 seconds and then relax the muscles and take light inhalation.
Stage 4: Relaxed breathing using the diaphragm
Can you breathe for 1-2 minutes using the tummy or stomach only? If you are uncertain or your sensations are absent or vague, it is necessary to review Module 8. How to develop diaphragmatic breathing 24/7
After the student is able to breathe using mainly the diaphragm, the next step is to learn how to relax it during exhalations. Each exhale should be accompanied by relaxation of all bodily muscles. The changes in the breathing pattern for a person with the low initial CP, who practices relaxation of the diaphragm only (no deliberate air hunger), are shown below.
Relaxed Diaphragmatic Breathing for Hypertension and Low CP students
Your breathing before this exercise is shown using the black line (with forceful exhalations). During this exercise, you should unblock the diaphragm. You have the following goal: take your usual inhalation using your diaphragm only and then relax your diaphragm for exhalation. This will make your exhalations smooth (the blue line for your new breathing pattern). Note that the depth of your inhalations remains the same, but the frequency of your breathing becomes smaller. Hence, reduced breathing for low CP students is achieved using relaxation only. If you do this exercise correctly, you should notice that your pulse or heart rate is lower after the session.
For most people, this is a transitory (temporary) exercise. (Heart and hypertension patients should stick with this exercise until they get over 20 s CP and reduce or lower their high blood pressure to normal levels without medication.) Practice this exercise for 2-3 minutes so that you get a clear sensation of your relaxed diaphragmatic exhalation. (You can or even should wear the belt during this exercise, if you are not sure about your ability to breathe using your diaphragm only. The belt will prevent you from any chest breathing. Its use is described in Module 8.)
Reference Web Pages: Breathing norms, Medical Graphs and Tables about Breathing Rates (Minute Ventilation) and
Body Oxygen in Healthy, Normal and Sick People
Breathing
norms Parameters, graph, and description of the normal
breathing pattern
6 breathing myths 6
myths about breathing and body oxygenation (prevalence: over 90%)
Hyperventilation Definitions of
hyperventilation: their advantages and weak points
Hyperventilation Syndrome in the
Sick. Table
1. Western scientific evidence about prevalence of CHV
(chronic hyperventilation) in patients with various chronic conditions
(34 medical studies)
Normal Minute Ventilation in
Healthy Subjects: Easy and Light Breathing (14 Studies)
Hyperventilation Prevalence Present in Over 90% of
Normal People (24 medical publications)
HV and hypoxia
How and why deep breathing reduces oxygenation of cells and tissues of
all vital organs
Body oxygen test
How to measure your own breathing and body oxygenation (a simple DIY test)
Body oxygen in healthy
Table 4. CP (body oxygen level) in healthy people (27 medical
studies)
Body oxygen in sick Table 5.
CP (body oxygen level) in sick people (14 medical studies)
Buteyko
Table of Health Zones with clinical description of most common zones
Morning HV Morning
hyperventilation effect or how and why critically ill people are most
likely to die during early morning hours
References: CO2 Effects Web Pages
Vasodilation: CO2 expands arteries and arterioles facilitating perfusion
(or blood
supply) to all vital organs
The Bohr effect
How and why oxygen is released by red blood cells in tissues
Cell Oxygen Levels and oxygen transport are controlled by
alveolar CO2 and breathing
Oxygen Transport depends on
breathing and these two effects (Vasoconstriction-Vasodilation and the Bohr
effect) are parts of two diagrams that summarize influences of hypocapnia (low CO2
content in the blood and cells) on circulation and O2 delivery
Free Radical Generation takes
place due to anaerobic cell respiration caused by cell hypoxia. Hence,
antioxidant defenses of the human body are also regulated by CO2 and breathing
Inflammatory Response is controlled by
breathing since hypoxia leads to or intensifies chronic inflammation through over-expression
of the hypoxia-inducible factor 1, while normal
breathing reduces these processes
Nerve stabilization takes place due to calmative or
sedative effects of carbon dioxide in neurons or nerve cells
Muscle relaxation or relaxation of muscle cells
is normal at high CO2, while hypocapnia causes muscular tension, poor posture
and, sometimes, aggression and violence
Brochodilation - dilation of
airways (bronchi and bronchioles) by carbon dioxide, and their constriction due
to hypocapnia
CO2: Best Natural Cough Suppressant
and "home remedy" since it calms urge-to-cough nerve receptors located in the
tracheobronchial tree and larynx
Blood
pH regulation and regulation of other bodily fluids
CO2: Lung Damage Healer: Elevated carbon
dioxide prevents injury and promotes healing of lung tissues
CO2: Skin and Tissue Healer
Synthesis of Glutamine
in the Brain, CO2 fixation, and other chemical reactions
CO2 myth
"CO2 is a toxic waste gas" myth
Breathing control
How is our breathing regulated? Why hypocapnia makes breathing uneven and erratic?
Go back to: Learning Buteyko breathing exercises
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