Anatomy of Breathing

0:00 Good morning from poly. So this episode is all about breathing, the anatomy of breathing, the science of breathing and I'm doing it. Solo today is just going to be me and I'm going to be guiding you through some anatomy of breathing while we actually breathe.

0:16 So, it's kind of like a meditation, but not really, because we're going to kind of break it down and talk about how the lungs work and actually do some breathing and talk about what's happening while we're breathing. So, So it's going to be pretty fun.

0:30 So stay tuned. Welcome to the going pro yoga podcast. All right, so talking about the lungs. I think most of us understand that the lungs are within our chest. They're kind of encased within our ribs buried in it and we have to one on the left and one on the right now.

0:55 How does the are actually enter our lungs? And then what actually happens when the Goes into our lungs. And then why is it that we breathe out and, like, all of these intricate little things. So, I think most of us, understand that we need oxygen in order to function and we get oxygen from the air. And I think some of us know that carbon dioxide is what we remove from our lungs, whatever we breathe out. So CO2 is like a by-product or a waste product of breathing. Now, the interesting thing about

1:23 breathing is that, when we're breathing in the air from the atmosphere, the atmosphere itself is filled with a whole bunch of different things but mostly nitrogen. So the gaseous state of the nitrogen. I think it's like 70 some percent and then I think we have about 20% maybe 21 percent oxygen in the air and then you know, another 10% or so is about CO2, maybe a little less than that and then less than 1% is a bunch of other things.

1:50 Okay? So predominantly we have the main three ones, which is nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. So when we breathe in, we're breathing in those three gaseous. Molecules into our lungs and then our lungs are very efficient at just taking what it needs and getting rid of what it doesn't. So what it needs is the oxygen CO2. So it will take that and then it'll let the CO2 the nitrogen and all those other elements just kind of exit back out on the excel.

2:18 In addition to that when we are actually breathing in and taking what we need, the blood is also actually giving the CO2 from the body back into the lungs. In expelling it as well. So more CO2 is being released when we exhale, which I think a lot of us understand that concept.

2:38 So the question I guess is for some people is like how do we actually breathe like what's actually happening within our lungs? Are we actually like sucking in air? Are we pulling the air in? Like how does it actually work? So ultimately air enters the lungs because of pressure changes pressure changes within our lungs compared to with outside of our lungs which would be in the air around us. So when we inhale it's caused by our muscles actually pulling or expanding our rib cage to be

3:07 bigger. So It's kind of stretching out now within our ribcage, like I said, the lungs are sitting in there and the lungs are kind of attached to the to the inside of the rib cage. Meaning that like, if the ribs were to expand out to the sides or to the front, or up towards the head, or down towards the belly, and that's going to create more space within the lung cavity.

3:29 Now, if we create more space within the lung cavity, it kind of creates almost like a little vacuum, or it sucks. The air from basically, the atmosphere coming out of our mouth or nose. Into the lungs. So, when we expand the ribcage by using those muscles, we're decreasing, the pressure within the lung cavity and creating some somewhat of a vacuum and that vacuum kind of sucks the air into our lungs. So, that's how we breathe in.

3:56 And then when we breathe out, ultimately error, leaves our lungs because we relax those muscles that expanded our chest, or expanded our ribcage. So, now that our ribcage is no longer pushing out, it kind of just settle Back into its neutral position, the space within our lungs actually reduces. So that pressure kind of returns to normal and then ultimately because there was more in are in there beforehand because we breathe in, then, the air is pushed back out so that returns it to its normal position.

4:26 So the smaller the size of the lungs, the pushes the air back out of our mouth and out of our nose. So, let's talk a little bit more about the lung, Anatomy itself. And, like, what actually happens when we breathe the air in.

4:39 So like I said, inside our lungs, we have to or inside of our lungs inside of our rib cage. We have two lungs and within each lung there are these branches. Okay. So we have our windpipe or trachea which comes from basically, through our neck and then into our chest.

4:56 That's where we breathing in. Air comes from our nose. Or mouth. Into our lungs, okay? And then we have these branches from our windpipe that go into our lungs. Okay. So just imagine like a tree branch with all these small little branches. I kind of spread around all through our lung cavity, and these are called Bronk Bronk.

5:22 You'll lie. So, if you had bronchitis before, usually, it's an infection of the bronchi, which is the small little branches. Now, Like a tree, you know, trees have branches and at the end of branches, there's usually little buds that grow leaves or, you know, flowers and these types of things. So we don't have that growing inside of her lungs. But similarly, with these branches within our lungs, we have these cells called alveoli, a LV e 0l, i alveoli. Now these alveoli are small

5:57 little cells that are basically little air sacs in the Bundle up together kind of like let's say blueberries and blueberries blackberries or maybe even a black bears is probably a good example. Blackberries are mulberries, we're kind of bundled all together and kind of like a little pack hanging from a little Branch.

6:17 So, Within These branches of our lungs, we have a packs of these little alveoli kind of spread out all around. They're very, very small, right? We're talking about a cellular level. So very, very small in these alveoli because there are filled sacks, ultimately, Well, they're not always are filled sacks but they can take air into them because they're kind of like a sack.

6:37 They're also surrounded by a whole bunch of blood vessels or capillaries. So, lots of blood vessels just kind of in and around all of these little sacs or these little balls. And these blood vessels are both veins and arteries, so they can actually take and give from the alveoli, okay? So you can kind of see where I'm going with this when we breathe. In right, our ribs expand, we pull the ribs out. We pull the ribs down and pull the ribs up. We decrease the pressure or

7:08 we're sorry we increase the space within our lungs. Decreasing the pressure and therefore creating a little vacuum to suck the air in When the air enters our lungs, these little sacs, these little alveoli fill up with air, right?

7:23 They have the space to do that. When they fill up with air, the blood. Capillary is these little veins. These little arteries are now in action, they're going to take the oxygen from the air sacs and they're going to go into the bloodstream to be distributed throughout the body.

7:40 And then the the CO2 is going to leave the blood and go back into the Avila alveoli. So that when we exhale, the CO2 comes out. So on a very basic level, very science level, that's kind of how it all works. Okay, we breathe in air. Enters our lungs.

8:00 From a change of pressure fills up these little balls or these little cells within our lungs, oxygen gets taken out from these little sacs. CO2 gets put back. Into these little socks and then we breathe out. So I'm explaining it within like, you know, 10 seconds.

8:16 But it's happening, very, very quickly. Think about how many times you breathe. So that was about a two to three second breath, right there. And it happens all at the same time. So our body is amazing. First of all, how efficient it is that being able to take oxygen and CO2 and just distribute it in the way that it needs to be distributed is fantastic. So, I think that's ultimately the fundamentals of understanding how the lungs work. So can I just stay With that is

8:44 really where you need to be when it comes to just understanding. Now this isn't something that I would explain to anyone ever unless it's something that you're teaching. But it is really helpful to just understand kind of how the lungs work from from a teacher's perspective, or a yoga teachers perspective and allows you to have a little bit more depth.

9:03 Now we can talk about a few other things and the next thing that I think is important to understand is just like which muscles are actually controlling our breath. You know we talked about how would I actually works is in like our lungs, expand because a rib cage.

9:17 Pulls basically, opens our lungs a little bit bigger so which muscles are actually expanding our rib cage for our lungs to get bigger. So I think the obvious one is the diaphragm most people understand that the diaphragm is a breathing muscle. The diaphragm is basically a horizontal or it's basically at the bottom of our ribs and it's a flat like muscle kind of almost like a like us.

9:43 You could say like a piece of paper, maybe a bit thicker than that and then ultimately, what it does is when it contracts, it pulls the ribs down or at least it pushes the doesn't pull the ribs down, excuse me. It pushes down on the organs to create space for the bottom part of the lungs to expand downwardly. Okay?

10:03 So I'll say that again, the diaphragm sits just below the ribs and it pushes the organs down to create space. So more are there? There's more space within the lungs. That's why when we breathe in through our belly, We're actually pushing that air or feels like we're pushing air down into our belly, but we're not actually doing it. The belly is just kind of moving the organs out of the way so that the air can enter the lower down. Okay, so that's one obvious

10:30 muscle that activates inhalation or breathing in. Then we have some, maybe some obvious ones as well. The chest, the chest muscles. So your PEC muscles. Some parts of your shoulder. When you breathe in through your chest, lifting up through your chest.

10:48 And then exhaling out. You can feel your chest expand. Okay. So from the basically, if you put your hands just above your chest or just below your collar bones and you breathe, in through your chest, So the muscles of your chest can help to expand in that space as well ultimately again creating more space within a long so that air can go in. Where else can we go?

11:11 Let's go to the side body. Okay, so the side body, you can, if you want to depending on what you're doing, you can place your hands just below your armpits, just on your ribs. Then you try to Breathe Into Your Hands. Pushing your hands out to the side and then exhaling.

11:28 So what muscles are actually doing that? Pushing the air out to the sides of a rib cage. Probably series of ones but there's these small little muscles in between each of your ribs called intercostals, enter meaning in between cost Souls meaning ribs.

11:45 So, in between your ribs there's these muscles and they will help to create just a little bit of extra space between your ribs as they expand allowing for more air to enter the lungs. And then we also have probably some other muscles on the side.

11:59 Like I would say probably Your serratus, anterior now, serratus, anterior. If you don't know what that one is, it's a very important stabilizing muscle for the shoulder, especially for arm balances. However, it is also a player in helping with inhalation especially from breathing in your side body, it's definitely going to help to expand some of the ribs out to the side as the air comes in. Okay, let's move into the back body. So the back body, basically, I

12:29 don't think you can put your hand there, unless you have super open shoulders. I do not, but I can kind of put my hand between my shoulder blades. And then trying to breathe into your hand into the back or just trying to breathe through your back is probably an easier.

12:43 Q, trying to breathe through your back. So, you're pushing your back behind you? As you inhale, exhale. So what we're doing here? Is again, we're creating space. We're allowing the rib cage from the back side of the body to expand posteriorly or towards the back. And that again is also going to create more space and then air is going to come into the lungs.

13:16 The muscles that control that I would say, probably your latissimus dorsi or some of your back muscles and probably also some of your intercostals as well because the intercostal muscles between the ribs. They're kind of everywhere all the way around so they're assisting in a lots of different inhale, breath inhaled Breathing's, and then, let's talk about the last one, which is probably the most common way of breathing for a lot of people, especially in high

13:39 stress environments, Metropolis cities, and that is breathing through the shoulders or through the upper parts of the lungs. So we kind of talked about it a little bit when we talk about the chest, right, breathing through the chest, You're breathing through the upper part of your lungs, but you can also breathe through your shoulders, where your shoulders kind of drop towards your ears. In doing that, it typically results in kind of a short shallow breathing pattern.

14:13 Okay. So maybe you're going to see where I'm going with this. But ultimately, when we breathe through our shoulders, or what, a lot of people do, naturally is breathe through their shoulders mostly because they don't know how to use their diaphragm. They don't know how to use the muscles in their side body to expand the ribs at different ways. They only Really know how to breathe through their shoulders and in through their neck a little bit. And that's usually because, you

14:39 know, they're either high-strung or they got a lot going on in their life and they're really not slowing down to pay attention to their breath and by doing. So, what ends up happening is they get shorter shallow breathing. Meaning they're not actually using the full capacity of their lungs because when they're breathing in the breathing, in only to the upper part of their lungs. So into their chest, into their shoulders now like a lot of us. I know a lot of people hold

15:03 stress in their shoulders and their neck and the trap muscles ultimately and the trap muscles the neck muscles. Scalenes levator scapulae. If you know what those words are, it doesn't really matter. But those are some of the muscles in the neck and those help to pull the upper ribs towards the header upward or the clavicle or collarbone upward, which helps to create some space in the lungs, upper lungs.

15:32 To bring the air it. Now short shallow breathing is ultimately super not very healthy. Let's just put it that way. Ultimately it's breathing very quickly and with small amounts or small volume, okay, it's almost on its way to a panic attack type of breathing and I wouldn't I don't want to say that.

15:53 That's an actual panic attack. People can short shallow, breathe and not be panicking but it's not a good start to be moving in the opposite direction. In which would be more relaxed. Calm breathing deep breathing. So, because when someone is feeling stressed, because when someone is feeling high-strung, where they have a lot going on and they're not conscious of their breathing and they're just kind of on autopilot. They're typically going to be,

16:18 they're typically going to be breathing through their upper parts of their lungs. Like we're talking about now through their chest, through the shoulders, using these muscles up above in the traps in the neck. And then with the emotion that they're feeling which is stress high-strung maybe you know some other undesired emotion.

16:38 And they're having short shallow breathing. These muscles are going to start to absorb or embody this emotion, ultimately stress. So when we say, oh yeah, I carry a lot of stress in my shoulders. I carry a lot of stress in my neck or I carry a lot of stress. You know, in these trap muscles here, it's true. Because depending on your lifestyle, not necessary you You yourself.

17:01 But I'm just talking about a lot of people in general and this will just help to fuel you as a teacher to be able to help guide people through breathing and understanding of what's going on in their own body. But ultimately carrying a lot of stress in the shoulders and in the neck is, as a result of this unconscious breathing pattern of short, shallow breathing.

17:19 So that's why a lot of people carry stress, and the shoulders are in the neck. Now on another hand, there's also other ways that stress can be carried out through the neck and the shoulders. Depending on again, their lifestyle working at a desk and maybe the setup for their desk is not really good, or their office chair and their shoulders are rounding forward. And there's all these other stresses from a physical perspective that are coming through and that can also ultimately caused some stress in

17:47 the shoulders as well. But I'm talking from an emotional stress which is a lot of people relate emotional stress to the shoulders and to the neck. And that's usually related to this breathing pattern or lack thereof. So ideally we want to breathe through more loan that we have accessible to us which you know, you don't have a diagram. You can't really see how much longer we have but just imagine, you have lungs and go all the way down to the bottom part of your rib cage, right?

18:12 Not just to collarbones slightly, actually slightly above your collarbones your lungs will go. But then all the way down to the bottom of your rib cage. And like we explored the beginning of this podcast episode was that you can expand your lungs and a variety of different ways. Down through the belly using the diaphragm. Up through the chest.

18:36 Using some of the PEC muscles, some of the shoulder muscles. Go through the side body. Using some of the intercostal muscles and the serratus, anterior. Stabilizing muscle of the shoulder and then through your back body Lat muscles a couple of their back muscles.

19:03 Probably some intercostals as well. Ultimately, we expanded the lungs in a variety of different ways. Not just short, shallow breathing, not just through the chest, not just through the shoulders. Okay, we can breathe through our shoulders. When we pull our RL our shoulders towards our ears, And it can exaggerate a little bit.

19:25 But you can do short shallow breathing, pretty easily when you breathe through your your shoulders and through your neck. So we don't want to just do that. We want to breathe and explore all the movements of our breath. All the movements of our lungs that can do and a lot of us practice this and you know this right we do this as teachers as Yogi's, we practice this but a lot of other people they don't know how to do that. They really really don't.

19:49 So this is a helpful tool. The purpose of this podcast is to give you some fuel on how to help guide possibly either meditations or maybe even opening or closing zip class. I would say openings is probably better. Her. Because at the beginning of a class, it's a really good time to establish the breath.

20:05 To provide a moment of Stillness. So during this moment of Stillness what an awesome opportunity to talk about the breath not just inhales and exhales, but maybe talking about queuing your students to breathe through different parts of their body through their abdomen through their belly breathing through their aside body, right?

20:26 Really being conscious of their breath and using different words to do that. In different words to explore that Okay, so now I want to just talk a little bit more about the lungs and how we can achieve maximum capacity, very long.

20:42 So I'm going to use an example or story and that is that when we sleep at night, We don't need as much oxygen as we do when we're up in about doing things throughout the day, right? It's pretty obvious that whenever exercising.

20:55 We're doing yoga, we need a little bit more oxygen. We're going to be breathing a little bit heavier. Our muscles are going to require more oxygen to function, so our lungs and need to be pumping a little bit more in order to do that. So bringing it back to these, a Bo lie. Sells their little sacks, right?

21:14 Little air sacs. Now when are isn't really entering the lungs in certain areas? So, let's just say the lower part of the lungs and you're not quite the abdomen, but just below the rib cage, maybe, just slightly at the lower part of the rib cage at night time.

21:31 When we're breathing, we're breathing, pretty short shallow breathing, right? It's totally fine. Usually when you're sleeping you're not super stressed because if you're actually asleep, I wouldn't say that stress is something that's happening for you.

21:42 Maybe if you're not sleeping stress, might be happening for you, but ultimately, we're breathing short, shallow breathing, whenever not many short shallow breathing, but we're only using part of our capacity of our lungs and I would say, the upper part. So the lower parts of our lungs, which are all these little alveoli sacs that are in that area if there are isn't going in it.

22:03 It's kind of like the saying, you know, if you're not using it, you lose it, not that you lose these sacks, but if there's no air going in there, They're kind of kind of not shrivel up, but they're basically close. Okay, they'll close.

22:14 There's no air in that. So then they'll just kind of shrink if you will, or at least they'll kind of, you know, if you take a plastic bag and you just squish the plastic bag on a table, there's no air in it, it's just wrinkled up, that's ultimately would happen and does happen almost every night.

22:31 So, this example is to highlight that even in a single day whenever we don't use the certain aspect of Our lungs. The lungs. Just say, okay, well, if you're not gonna use me, we're just gonna, you know, be dormant if you will. So one of my favorite things to do in the morning, is to really explore my breath.

22:50 And really, try to breathe deeply to open up those lower capacity parts of my love or lower lobes of my lungs. Now, if I have the muscles developed, like the diaphragm and some of these other intercostal muscles to really expand through my belly and to access the lower parts of my lungs, it's probably pretty easy to do on a a daily basis, you know, it's not like, it's, it's a challenge, but for someone who doesn't often breathe down through their belly, or, you

23:18 know, they're, they have a very stressful life or stressful, work work life, and they're trying to breathe and they're feeling like, they're short of breath or they can't really do certain activities because it doesn't really feel good in their body. I think the the main problem for them is that they don't actually know how to access the maximum capacity of their lungs because the lower parts of their lungs near the ribs, the lower parts of the ribs that part will

23:50 ultimately be closed off or become a little bit more dormant so we kind of want to open that up. So, okay, how do we do this? How do we actually access and use the full capacity of your lungs? So we talk about the parts of the breath, there are 4 parts of the breath. And when we But then we're going to break down what's actually happening from a science perspective and anatomical perspective within the lungs so that we can understand how do we actually explore and improve our

24:17 lung capacity. So let's talk about the inhale and how we talk a lot about already as we breathe in. Our lungs are expanding air is entering through the lungs. Okay, so the inhale part, we can breathe in quickly. Or we can breathe in slowly. When we breathe in quickly, we can only breathe in so much. So if you do it with me, just breathing quickly. Right?

24:49 You sucked in a lot of air quickly but probably not a lot, not a large capacity and you can feel it in your chest the upper parts of your lungs more. So, okay? Now if you breathe in slowly through your nose, nice and slow, You generally can get a little bit more air down into your lungs, and you can actually feel it a little bit more, possibly in your belly. But definitely more volume is entering your lungs when you breathe in more slowly.

25:24 Now, how does this actually work from a science perspective? To be honest, I don't want to spend the time to explain it but just know that when you breathe in more slowly, you're allowing for more air to be able to enter the lungs.

25:36 And that it doesn't melt Amelie, get blocked off or capped off at a certain volume amount. So, breathing in slowly is a great way to start to expand your rib cage, or expand, your the volume of your lungs, rather. So when we do that are ultimately going to open up some of these alveoli that are in the lower parts of the lungs.

25:58 Now, the second part of the breath would be holding your breath at the top, or holding the breath, when you have air in your lungs. And then holding it there. So what's actually happening from a science or anatomical perspective there? I mean a few other things, from energetic perspective, spiritual perspective, emotional perspective. But physiologically, what's happening is, are, is being held in the lungs.

26:23 And now, if you think of, you know, different sections of your loans, upper part, middle part, lower part and we're breathing in and having a lot of air coming from the top there. For the upper part is going to fill up first.

26:35 And in the lower part doesn't quite get as much because maybe we just woke up. You know, those parts of our lungs are a little bit closed but then we're doing a slow inhale through the nose. Holding our breath. And as we hold the breath in the air is sitting in the upper parts of our lobes or our lungs. Maybe even the middle parts just because the air is actually beside the lower parts of the lungs, right? It's very close to it.

27:01 When we hold our breath, even for just a few seconds, it's allowing a little bit of extra time for some of this air oxygen CO2 nitrogen. All of these things. To spread a little bit lower to open up some of these Aveo lie.

27:19 These air sacs a little bit more then you breathe out. So when we hold our breath on an inhale, we're allowing more room for our, these alveoli, to be opened up in a, in, in used to their full capacity, which is pretty cool.

27:39 So, first thing in the morning, that's one of the things I do is, I take slow, inhale through my nose. Really try to breathe in through my belly, to really get to the lower parts of my lungs. And then I hold it. Sometimes four, four five, six seconds.

28:00 And then I breathe it out and when I hold that, I can feel like the pressure and I really kind of think about and concentrate and be like, oh yeah, while I'm holding my breath, the lower parts of my lungs are opening up.

28:12 You know, these little owl, have you a liar? Opening up? So that's more of my nerdy anatomical. Mind that works but you know, it's actually what's happening. So when I wake up in the morning, it's such a great way to kind of get me ready for the day and get my lungs warmed up. In fact, it's 8:00 in the morning, I woke up about an hour and a half ago and before I came to record, Cord this podcast. I was doing this exact breathing which inspired to do this podcast and it makes it so much

28:36 easier for me to be able to breathe throughout the day. You know, it's kind of the same reason why the beginning of class we established the breath. We focus on establishing the breath before we start moving. Well, at least in a Vinyasa Power Yoga, maybe hot the class because we want to warm up the lungs. We want to warm up the muscles, that control the lungs to be able to have full capacity.

29:00 And be ready as much as possible for whenever we need more oxygen. When removing your body, it's the same. Same logic, with waking up in the morning, we want to kind of warm up a lungs before we, you know, get up. Go for a walk, go to the gym, you know, have lots of conversations, talking, a lot, whatever it is. So it's just a great way to prep and warm up your lungs before the day.

29:21 Okay. So the third part of the breath is the exhale, right? So, inhale, We hold and then we exhale. So we'll talk, let's talk about the the excel in such a way that what's actually happening. Well we talked about a little bit before but when you exhale, you are ultimately just relaxing your muscles.

29:43 When you relax your muscles around your ribcage, your rib cage, returns to its normal position, then they are just kind of gets pushed out of your mouth or your nose, and that's how we exhale. Now, there are definitely situations where we can force an exhale, or we can exaggerate, and exhale, which sometimes feels really nice.

30:02 Right? Take a big inhale, Hold it for a moment and let it all out dramatic. Right? Sometimes I feel is really nice for people to be able to relieve some stress to kind of just like let it all go, right? So that's from emotional perspective, psychological perspective.

30:20 Absolutely helpful. So, which muscles are actually controlling the forced exhale. if you think about it, Hmm tough one to figure out but then if we go back to let's say a cough. So what happens when we cough Well, it's a forced exhale.

30:42 We're forcing air out of our lungs out of her mouth. Now, what do you feel when you cough I want to make it obvious? But the answer is your abdominals, your core muscles that are compressing their Contracting to ultimately push your organs, which ultimately push your lungs up in force the air out. Okay, so it's a forced exhalation and it's very important.

31:06 Obviously, if we're coughing we need to force something out or for feeling really. Stress. And we need to really dramatically breathe out. Then will, you know, use some of our abdominal muscles to some capacity to release that stress and ultimately release the air out of our lungs. But Naturally Speaking when we just relax, the air will exit our lungs.

31:28 So I try as much as possible to whenever I exhale to just really relaxed all of my muscles, so that the air flows out naturally now is it right or wrong to force it or not force it? It's up to you and your perspective on that.

31:43 I feel like if there's opportunities for me to lower stress in the body by focusing on relaxation, then I feel like that's more powerful than, you know, letting go of heavy, dramatic. Exhale that being said, there are moments and times when I feel very stressed and it's kind of like built up, and I feel like I need a quick release.

32:06 And that quick release can be that exhale, that forced exhale words. Not at all. I would feels good. You know it feels good in your body so why not do it? But generally speaking, the natural organic exhale with just relaxing Can be very soothing, very relaxing and probably more so useful in, you know, cool down in type practices where we can actually just not really Force anything and just really surrender to the breath surrender to the exhale. Okay, let's talk about the last

32:41 part which is sometimes the most tricky part for some people, and that is holding The breath or the lack of breath at the bottom of your exhale. So I'm going to breathe in Hold it. Exhale, relax. Hold it. Then continue breathing normally again, so you can probably hear the cicadas in the background, the bugs. But ultimately, let's talk about that portion of the breath, what's actually happening.

33:19 When we hold on an exhale, when we hold on an exhale or we hold at the bottom of the Excel. Rather. The Air in our lungs is less. You know, there's probably still some air in there absolutely because they otherwise the lungs would just kind of collapse so there still are in there.

33:37 Which The first thing to take note of, there's still air in your lungs, but not as much as there would be, as if you inhaled. So, let's talk at this. One's a little bit tricky, but ultimately, there's two things that come up for me. One is, is, what's the benefit of holding your breath, or holding the bottom of your exhale? And what is the problem or the challenge with it? So let's talk about the problem of the challenge first. Now, I recently learned this,

34:01 but I didn't know this because it wasn't my experience, but some people have a very difficult time holding On the bottom of their Excel, probably because it brings up a lot of fear, emotional fear within themselves. Because maybe they feel like I'm not gonna be able to get my next breath. I need to continue to breathe.

34:18 So holding with no air inside the lungs or perceivable. No, air inside the lungs feels very uncomfortable for a lot of people not myself, maybe not you. Maybe you the point is is being aware of that by itself is really helpful, you know, when I literally just learned this a couple weeks ago, Byron actually explained it to me.

34:37 So I thought that was really important to share on this type of episode. So knowing that will help to sometimes guide, you know, or at least help your students be seen to understand. If you're doing some breathing exercises in your encouraging holding the breath, at the bottom of the exhale. Right?

34:55 It's also an important portion of salutations, when you're going down from a forward, fold halfway lift, and then down to plank or chaturanga. There's a long exhale there, which ultimately you're going to hold your breath for a moment in order to complete the salutation, not for everyone.

35:12 But generally speaking, that's kind of how it flows. Okay? So let's talk more about, why would we do this in the first place? Besides, you know, functionally from a salutation perspective going from halfway lift. Down to chaturanga or Plank and then up into upward facing dog. What's actually happening when we hold the bottom of the exhale is we don't have as much air in our lungs. Yes.

35:40 And therefore what actually happens is our heart rate will start to lower. Now there's a bunch of other things happening that's going on here. It's actually one of the optimal times to activate the vagus nerve. Now the vagus nerve is one of the cranial nerves and cranial nerve that helps to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, meaning the rest and digest part of our nervous system. And when we're breathing or at

36:09 least doing controlled breathing, back is a good way to activate the vagus nerve, but more specifically at the bottom of the exhale, When we can really start to activate the vagus nerve. So what does the vagus nerve Do It? Ultimately slows down our heart rate. It allows us to feel less, you know, stress response more of a calm response.

36:29 So ultimately, this bottom of the exhale, because we don't have as much are Insider lungs, and we're stimulating the vagus nerve what the benefit is is our heart rate starts to lower. Now I know this because I tested it out using my Fitbit and it dropped about 10 beats for myself.

36:50 But I also learn this because I was speaking to a clinical psychologist and we were talking about the breadth and the effect on the ultimate state of being the emotional state of being. But more specifically, the science part which I thought was really interesting and he explained it to me in such a way that because there isn't as much air inside the lungs.

37:12 That means that there's not as much oxygen being distributed throughout the body, which means the heart doesn't need to pump as much right there. Still pumping going on because there is still are in there. There is still oxygen being distributed, but there isn't as much as there was if you take a full breath in and you're holding your breath.

37:30 So for that reason, the hearts like okay, I'm going to take a little bit of a break here, you know. I'm just going to slow down a little bit and therefore that's why our heart rate lowers. So how is this a benefit? Well depending on what you're trying to do, if you're trying to sleep, trying to relax holding at the bottom of your Excel can be really, really helpful to lower your heart rate to try to relax. In fact, when you're trying to sleep, it's actually important for your body to be in a relaxed

37:59 state of being obviously in order to fall asleep. If you're feeling very high-strung, you just finished a meeting. You just finished working out something like this, you're in your sympathetic nervous system, your more fighter. Late nervous system, then it's very difficult to fall asleep. So you need to switch from your sympathetic to your parasympathetic to be more relaxed. How do you do that?

38:20 Well, controlled breathing is a good way to do it even more. So focusing on the bottom of your exhale, So that's the four parts of the breath, okay. We talked about the slow inhale Benefits of the slow. Inhale we get to get more air into our lungs. Holding the top of our inhale and opening up the closer. The adjacent abiola by air sacs relaxing on the exhale. The benefit there is well, just relaxing. And then knowing that the different part or the different option.

38:54 There is to force, the exhale out, and then holding at the bottom of the Excel, which we just talked about in the benefits of lowering, your heart rate and ultimately knowing that some people have a fear response around that and I think if you are one of those people that has that fear response just knowing that there is no major risk from an intellectual perspective, knowing that even though your are Is being pushed out of your lungs and it feels like you have no air in your lungs.

39:23 There is air in your lungs. Right. There is still are in there. There's still oxygen being distributed. So the fear is definitely more of a psychological emotional perspective and it's something that can be trained and something that can be worked on.

39:35 So whether that's you or something that you, you know, of and you want to help them. That's a way that you can explain it to them to make them feel at ease and feel seen. And if you have a classroom full of people in, you're encouraging people to breathe at the bottom of the record or not.

39:47 Breathe that. Hold that. The bottom of their exhale, you should know that there may be someone in the room that doesn't feel comfortable with that. So that's just helpful for them to know that you see them and maybe you're, you know, workshopping the salutations and going from forward folds halfway lift, step back to jump, or jump back to plank or chaturanga that flow or that part of the flow of their requires, a little bit, more of a hold on, the bottom of

40:16 the exhale before you go into an up, dog, or Cobra. So that portion there can also be workshop with regards to the breath and talking about the breath a little bit more. Hopefully, this is helpful to give you a little bit of fuel, right? So, what are we just talked about? We talked about the lung Anatomy a little bit. We talked about how we actually get oxygen into our body, into our blood, throughout the muscles, right? We use these little alveoli sex,

40:40 right? And they takes the oxygen goes into the bloodstream and then the bloodstream, dumps the CO2 back into the lungs and the lungs, just push it all out. Sounds all pretty boring, but that's actually how it works, how we actually, inhale we're using different parts of our loans to be able to inhale. Hail, right?

40:56 We can inhale through our diaphragm, through her belly, or our side body, through our chest, through our back, body and about right expanding in all different, directions of our lungs, to access the full capacity, very useful, very useful and then the exhale. Well, there's different types of exhales, the relaxed exhale, or the forced exhale.

41:21 But in conjunction with the four types of the breath, right slowly? Breathing in Through the nose, holding it. Relaxing. And then holding it and the benefits or the important factors to understand for each of those aspects of the breath.

41:38 So, thank you so much for listening. I hope this was a helpful last episode. I haven't done one of these solo episodes in a while, where we talked about some Anatomy stuff and to be honest, I never know how it lands. I get a few people that say that they really love it when I explained Anatomy things on podcasts, but part of me is thinking, you know, visually it's really helpful to see a lot of the stuff.

41:57 So kudos to you, if you're following along and you were able to understand this, that's Fantastic. Ideally, having visuals is always helpful. But at the very least, hopefully you got something out of this 40 minute episode. Definitely practice your breathing. And if you followed along with me, chances are, you're going to feel a little bit better because we did actually do some pranayama practice during this podcast. Thank you so much for listening

42:19 and we hope you have a beautiful beautiful day. We'll see you next week.