Breath And Exercise: The Motivation You’ve Been Looking For
Shallow breathing (or chest breathing) causes a constriction of the chest and lung tissue over time, decreasing oxygen flow and delivery to your tissues. Deep, rhythmic breathing that expands the diaphragm muscle— the cone-shaped muscle under your lungs—works like a pump in your body, expanding the lung’s air pockets and stimulating digestion and elimination by massaging the lymphatic system.
Breathing and your lymph system
We often don’t think about our lymph nodes unless we hear about someone with cancer, which is surprising since we have twice as many lymph vessels as blood vessels.
Your lymph system is like your body’s sewer system. Lymph vessels are everywhere in the body, our cells swim in an ocean of lymphatic fluid that carry away unused blood protein, dead cells and toxins. It works like this: blood is pumped around the body by the heart, transporting nutrients and oxygen to the cells. Once the cells have absorbed what they need, they excrete debris and toxins, which get flushed and deactivated by lymphatic fluid.
The lymph fluid then drains into the circulatory system through two ducts at the base of your neck (the thoracic duct) and become part of the blood and plasma that pass through the kidneys and liver. But unlike your circulatory system, your lymph system does not have a built-in pump. It relies on the acts of breathing and bodily movements to pass all that waste fluid.
The bottom line is if your lymph system is not working efficiently, you can’t detoxify properly. And if you aren’t breathing deeply or moving, chances are your lymph is not flowing as well as it could. As you might imagine, over time this can lead to some health concerns, including weight gain, muscle loss, high blood pressure, fatigue and inflammation.
But the great news is that you can begin moving lymph fluid more efficiently through your body by learning how to practice deep breathing. The expansion and contraction of the diaphragm actually pumps your lymph system and massages your internal organs, which helps rid the body of toxins, leaving more room in the cell for an optimal exchange of oxygen.
And while you are helping your body to clean house, you’ll also be fighting stress.
Breathing and the relaxation response
Deep breathing is the fastest way to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, or what some practitioners call the relaxation response. The sympathetic nervous system, which is stimulated in times of stress and anxiety, controls your fight or flight response, including the unhealthy spikes in cortisol and adrenaline.
As many of you know chronic stress depletes the body of nutrients and destabilizes brain and endocrine chemistry. Depression, muscle tension and pain, insulin sensitivity, GI issues, insomnia and adrenal fatigue among scores of other conditions are all related to an overworked sympathetic nervous system. What counteracts this mechanism? The parasympathetic nervous system.
Breath is the fastest way for these systems to communicate, flicking the switch from high alert to low in a matter of seconds.
When someone is scared or stressed, they tend to hold their breath or breathe rapid, shallow breaths. The heart pounds and muscles clench as the adrenaline kicks in (for more on this see our article on Anxiety). When the fright is over, they let out a deep breath; cuing the brain that everything is O.K. If deep breathing continues, the heart rate decreases, the lungs expand and the muscles relax. Equilibrium is restored.