Control: Professional athletes who are breathless strive for breath control.
Chaos: Athletes who don’t get paid use breathlessness as a sign of success.
We are always somewhere between breathlessness and breath control.
Those who feel they can’t control their breathlessness know they need breath control.
The rest of us assume we have breath control because we can choose breathlessness.
Rather than assume. Let me help you take a look at your choices.
I had no idea breath control would change my life until I developed breathing awareness. In life, I thought I wanted chaos. I thought I operated at my best, on the edge, taking risks, with very little control.
Get fitter, get stronger, lessening the impact of asthma was the story I was going with. The more you do the better it is. The truth, it got me only so far.
What’s your story? Maybe you too think the idea is to push hard in each training session, as an escape, a platform to show yourself, or others, how far, fast, or how much you can do. A marker, of your endeavour and effort. Chaotic and adrenaline-fueled. You choose chaos. Life in the red zone. No, breathe control, no off switch.
Insights that change how you view the world and the story you tell others can come from the unlikeliest of sources. I had taken a Postural Restoration Institute course and when I was asked to blow up a balloon with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, I knew something was not right. I could outrun everyone else in the class I was taking, yet I could not blow up a balloon.
Three months and a lot of hard work later, I had made breathing through my nose the default option. Blowing up balloons was no longer an issue and neither was my asthma. Having dug deeper into breathing techniques I had become an asymptomatic asthmatic. I was sold on my new perspective.
Having a breakthrough moment, an insight into a new world, a new perspective, is never enough. If the change we seek to create means that much and we want to be constant and consistent in our choices, we need to issue ourselves a daily challenge. A mechanism by which we can keep the standards we set ourselves intact for today at least.
I write and think each day on the prompt. Chaos or control?
Am I bringing chaos because that is what the situation needs or am I bringing chaos because that is what I think is expected of me?
Over time by working with the challenge. Do I bring chaos or control? I have successfully edited the design of my life to walk, train, run, paddle, and ride with breath control > 80% of the time.
An asthmatic endurance athlete does not need to continually prove to himself that he is resilient, productive, and determined. You don’t get to be an asthmatic endurance athlete if you are not. I didn’t think of myself as stuck, busy compounding a virtue that was already in abundance, reinforcing patterns that once served me well. But I was.
I have learned to slow down in all aspects of my life. To challenge my thinking to take on new perspectives and skills. To become curious enough to learn breath control gave me the flexibility of choice. If you were less busy doing what you have always done. What else could you learn? What skills could you develop, and apply with the time you have?
My journey towards the flexibility of choice started with developing breathing awareness. Here’s how you can do it too.
STEP 1: Breathing rate at rest
Control: 16 diaphragmatic breaths through your nose in a minute.
Chaos: Anything else
Do you bring chaos or control to your breathing?
If at this point you fail, because you are a mouth breather, don’t worry. I spent 3 months learning to breathe through a broken, seemingly dysfunctional nose.
If you can breathe through your nose but can’t diaphragmatically breathe. Consider your breathing as uncontrolled.
Finally, if you breathe through your nose and diaphragmatically breathe but you take in excess of 16 breaths per minute, sitting quietly. You too must consider your breathing as uncontrolled.
Take note and continue.
Now you know if your breath control is either controlled or uncontrolled. Are you frustrated or curious?
An interested observer is open and curious. Think, growth mindset.
The alternative is a harsh critic who will (possibly unintentionally) shut down options with criticism and of course bemoan the inevitable problems that occur when making a course correction.
Developing breath control is a creative process. There will always be problems, progress is not tracked with a straight line and success is not with every footstep. Prescription drugs and pharmacies are popular for a reason.
Are you willing to commit?
IF you choose curiosity, you need to know where you are currently and that begins with building awareness of how you breathe. The very first step to taking ownership of your breathing patterns.
To remain curious is a choice that will serve you well.
STEP 2: Breathing rate during the day
Over the next 3 weeks (21 days for a habit) each morning try writing out a table (see Table 1). No right or wrong. You are simply interested.
At the end of each day or the beginning of the next. Estimate how much of your day is spent with uncontrolled breathing.
For example, 80% of my time controlled and 20% uncontrolled.
Annotate the table with the activities that either help you bring control or chaos.
For example:
- Going for a walk
- Training
- In conflict
- Working
- Resting
- When worried
Stressed, talking a lot, training relentlessly hard? Was that reflected in the %-age proportion of time you spent with uncontrolled breathing during the day?
If you spend too much time thinking, with total control, never choosing chaos, could you rip it up occasionally and let go of your emotions.
Have you chosen to do more when choosing to do less would bring control?
Table 1. Breath awareness
STEP 3: Control or chaos
Here is a challenging question you can work with daily in your journaling process.
Today, did I bring chaos or control into my life?
If you repeatedly ask yourself to look for red buses, you will increasingly see more of them. Not because there are more red buses on the road each day, but because daily you have built up your awareness to a task in hand.
Building breathing awareness is no different. There is no magic formula to copy. In our efforts to be a little wiser about the choices that we live with, we get to choose the things that we pay attention to.
What are you paying attention to?