Learning the Buteyko method by modules
Module 6. Manual "How to prevent sleeping on one's back"
(Instructional Guide)
This manual can be downloaded for printing: PDF Manual "How to prevent sleeping on one's back".
First of all, if you have doubts about importance of sleeping positions or about prevention of sleeping on one's back, you can conduct a simple test described above in Part 12. Morning hyperventilation. Measure your body oxygenation (the CP test) after sleeping in different sleeping positions. You can use an electrical clock with elimination showing seconds or a ticking mechanical clock so that there is no need to turn the light on. Note that you should spend about 10-15 minutes in a certain position in order to achieve a stable metabolism correspondent to this sleeping position. Sleeping on the back is worst and causes lowest body oxygenation.
If you find that your CP does not decrease (or maybe even improve) after sleeping on your back, you must sleep on the back all the time. However, none of Russian doctors ever met or heard about such people. Why? According to Dr. Buteyko,
Many severely sick patients remain sitting up, afraid to lie down. This is sensible. We should lie down only for a minimum amount of time, and only when sleeping. Our patients with deep breathing practice [breathing exercises], but cannot control their breathing at night, and hence, sleep is actually a poison for them. The longer he sleeps, the more chances that his breathing will be increased causing attacks. Therefore, we wake him up after 1-2 hours, he practices decreasing respiration...
Children, especially asthmatics, or the deep-breathing children turn themselves over on the tummy during sleep. And here it begins: the parents are on guard, the fight goes on, sometimes for years. The child turns on the tummy hiding its head under the pillow, but no, they turn him over to face up. Again and again he tries to rescue [himself], but they will not give in. There is no rest for him, nor for the others. And if we take a child sick with asthma, he sleeps on his back and wheezes. He turned on his tummy, the wheezing disappears in a minute. [He is] again on his back: in a minute the wheezing starts again.
Sleeping on the back for many sick people means about twice as much breathing and corresponding CP drop. This often causes acute symptoms due to early morning hours and death in severely sick people. Hence, Dr. Buteyko, his medical colleagues who practiced the Buteyko breathing method, and their numerous patients used variety of tools to prevent sleeping on one's back. Let me list some of them.
1. Some people were sleeping with a backpack to prevent turning on the back. This is one (“awkward”) option.
2. It is possible to prop oneself from the sides with pillows.
3. Another option is to sew a pocket on the back of your night shirt and put a tennis ball there.
4. Or one can take a sock and wrap it around the middle of a belt making a knot. The belt can be positioned around the middle of the chest with the knot on the back of the person. The knot should be big enough to prevent the person from sleeping on the back and it would not wake the person up since it is soft.
5. Currently, the most popular solution is to take a double cotton layer (strip) of bed linen about 2 m long and 20-30 cm wide. Wrap it around self, make two knots on your chest and move them on your back. A simple scarf can be also used.
Practice of Buteyko breathing teachers shows, that sleeping on the back is the sign of low CP. This problem is present when the CP is about 20 s or less. Once, your morning CP is over 25 s, you are very unlikely to sleep on your back at all and there is no need to use any of these techniques.