WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL BREATHING
What’s happening when you breathe? An intro the the basics of functional (day to day) breathing.
Breathing is something most of us take for granted and pay very little attention to, perhaps you resonate with that?
Functional breathing focusses on getting your day to day breathing into healthy and regulated patterns so that you can optimise your wellbeing. It has an influence on, and is influenced by, sleep, diet, activity, environment, health and lots more, so, here’s what’s going on when you breathe (which is that basically an entire universe in your body is playing a perfect orchestration of all you need to stay alive)….
When you breathe in, your heart rate tends to increase along with a slight rise in blood pressure (really slight), and when you breathe out, both tends to decrease. This natural variation in heart rate during the breathing cycle is known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and is a manifestation of the interaction between the heart and the autonomic nervous system and the heart and the lungs work together to maintain balance in our bodies. This change in breathing/heart rate is healthy and indicates a flexible and responsive autonomic nervous system.
Some people may mistakenly think we need a steady and consistent heart rate which is not entirely true, though of course we don’t want a disregulated heart rate or breathing pattern on a daily basis pr when at rest. The reason that that's not realistic to try to have one consistent rate, is that it's natural that when we exert ourselves or put our bodies under stress, our heart rate will increase to help us initiate other systems in the body to support us in managing the ‘stressor'. That stress can be voluntary (exercise, altitude, effort etc) or involuntary (trauma, acute stress without anticipating it etc). In elected stress situations, we would then expect a relatively easy and smooth return to regulation to take place. The problems start to happen when we can't re-regulate comfortably and quickly once the stressful situation has ended.
The pace and depth of your breathing influence the duration of each breathing cycle (i.e., one inhalation and exhalation = 1 cycle) and consequently the intervals between heartbeats. Slow, deep, diaphragmatic breathing is associated with a longer exhalation phase, which can lead to increased Heart Rate Variability and a more coherent heart rhythm. Learning to consciously slow the breath is helpful when so many people are habitually over breathing/shallow breathing daily!
Slow, controlled breathing, especially with that emphasis on extending the exhalation, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. This PNS activation promotes relaxation, reduces stress, and enhances the rest-and-digest response; as a result, heart coherence is promoted.
As we said earlier, although it may sound counter-intuitive, a healthy heart does not beat at a perfectly regular interval and typically there are slight variations in the timing between beats eg., during exercise, sleep, meditation, exertion etc it will vary. This is good and demonstrates that we are moving between different aspects of our nervous system in healthy ways because our heart rate variability is influenced by the direct interplay between the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) branches of the autonomic nervous system.
There are several major benefits to coming into coherence through our breathing:
Emotional Regulation: Heart coherence is often linked with positive emotions such as love, gratitude, and compassion. It is thought to help regulate emotional responses, reduce anxiety, and enhance emotional resilience.
Stress Reduction: Practices that promote heart coherence can lead to decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol and overall relaxation of the nervous system.
Cognitive Clarity: Heart coherence is believed to improve cognitive function, leading to enhanced decision-making, problem-solving, and mental clarity.
Physical Health: Consistently experiencing heart coherence may have positive effects on cardiovascular health, immune function, and overall well-being.
Functional breathing refers our day to day breathing and the things that help us optimise it. It's typically used in sports performance and altitude training (Oxygen Advantage), or for support with conditions such as sleep apnoea, COPD/ lung disease, long Covid, or asthma in its Buteyko form.
Functional breathing plays a crucial role in influencing heart coherence (see above) through its impact on the autonomic nervous system, specifically the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, and the activation of vagal tone (which we will cover in another post) and the way the body communicates through the network of nerves in our body out into the peripheral nervous system.
Shallow breathing or hyperventilation breathing will, over time, have an enormous impact on many areas of our wellbeing but it’s something we can intentionally correct and learn to regulate. We need to be breathing well for our oxygenated blood to be delivered (by our Co2 & nitric oxide produced in the nose = nose breathing is best day to day!) to our vital organs and across our blood brain barrier. Experiencing brain fog? Could be a lack of oxygen getting to where it needs to go.
There are a range of breathing techniques which can modulate this balance and promote an intentional state of heart coherence, which in turn regulate blood pressure, hormonal activation, and heart rate in general, improving our response patterns to life and all it throws at us! We shift from re-activity to choice and response.
Better breathing = better health = better life…..what do you think?
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