- Our diaphragm has 3 roles, respiration, digestion and stablisation. All equally important, all key to how we work. All wonderfully related and connected by our bodies. What I hadn’t considered, and have been musing on is the challenge the diaphragm has in doing more than 1 job at the same time, ie stablisation and respiration. If we get scared / shocked our diaphragm kicks into stabilising us to react. Does this then compromise breathing? The interesting thing about this (which I learn this week) is that we anticipate (or project) how we need to breathe, based on learnt responses from previous experience. So a particular smell, sound, vision can impact us to ‘prepare’ ourselves for an event. This in turn can lead to stabilisation of the trunk and holding of breath, overusing accessory upper chest muscles – all for something that never materialises. Having two knock on effects. Firstly we breathe (or don’t) in a way that doesn’t meet our metabolic needs, secondly we misuse or accessory breathing muscles to prepare our body, and if done enough times both things create a disease / challenge to our system. The next thing related to this was the idea of the Pavlovian dog syndrome, so you don’t even need the event itself, just a learnt trigger that has been associated with a stressful experience. Replace the Pavlovian dog response with one of an alarm on a phone, the jingle of a newscast or any other sound / smell associated with potential stress (all very relevant everyday occurrences for so many people) and you’ve got inbuilt breathing disorders, happening time after time for millions of people all day every day. How long does this take to create physical pain and discomfort? This has fascinated me and something that I need to absorb and learn more about. The idea of our immediate unconsidered digital landscape creating a long term health condition, that drip, drip, drip gradually (or maybe quickly) fundamentally alters your health.
- I was reminded of the lack of perspective for some people – who are deeply engaged in the daily news cycle, being fearful to leave their homes when close to a COVID strain nearby. The ability to take a step back, consider things from a wider position and then move forwards has been completely disrupted by the daily news / conversation. It’s like being with a growing child / plant and spending so much time you get lost in the day to day minutiae and fail to see the bigger, wider picture. This made me sad – bright people having their ability to think and comprehend in an objective fashion is not a good place for people to be.
- Listening to your body and resting muscles leads to repair and growth. Hamstring feels fixed
- I’m in a great environment at the moment to really learn how best to engage an online audience. I was having an interesting conversation with another breathwork practitioner (Gray – who taught me the Oxygen Advantage – a man with an open and curious mind who loves to learn) about the gap for physical practitioners between where they currently are and having an effective practice that is purely online. Pre COVID this would have seen fairly counter intuitive, now the norm. Some people have made a great transition (Dom Koch for example), whereas others are still in that space where they either don’t see the need or haven’t quite worked out how. As I was talking to Gray about this I realised that primary teaching is such a wonderful environment to hone the skills needed to connect, engage and provide quality teaching. Y6 children are experts at learning – and if bored quickly show you / tell you in a way that older chn / adults aren’t so obvious (or too polite to bother). The lessons I’m learning at the moment, in how you put together & deliver content for small groups and large are ones I need to consider and absorb.
BreatheToMove 