10 Fun Facts About Breathing & the Respiratory System
Our ability to breathe is fascinating, as it’s one of the only systems in our body that can be controlled both voluntarily, through the central nervous system, and more often involuntarily, through the autonomic nervous system. This overlap between the two systems is the reason why focused, intentional breathing methods through yoga and meditation are able to affect other involuntary muscles like the heart.
Our breath is what gives us life and without it, the human body cannot exist. But is it possible to better your life by paying more attention to how you breathe?
While breathing is so commonplace to our existence, proper breathing techniques and awareness of breath can have dramatic implications on our health. Having knowledge of specific breathing techniques can lower stress, help you sleep, help your mind function more acutely, and even curb food cravings.
When we breathe, the average adult draws in about 13 pints of air into the lungs every minute. From the lungs, that oxygen is then transferred from the air sacs in our lungs throughout the body via red blood cells to the blood vessels that distribute it to nearly every system. Meanwhile, waste gases, like CO2, are exchanged and filtered out.
For the average person with good lung health, the amount of oxygen in the blood, or the arterial blood gas (ABG) oxygen level, should be somewhere between 95-100 percent oxygen.
Interesting Facts About Breathing
1. Breathing is the only autonomous system of the body that we can also control. This means that the body governs it, but we can change how we breathe through conscious breathing practices such as pranayama.
2. If you laid out the lungs flat, they would cover the size of a tennis court (about 70 square meters!) The right lung is larger than the left: The left lung is made up of two lobes while the right is made up of three.
3. When we breathe we are either right nostril or left nostril dominant. You can find out which is more active by wetting your thumb and holding it to the right then the left nostril. Yogis believe that when the right is more open or breathing more smoothly we are more driven by the sympathetic nervous system. This means we are more fired up, active, and aroused. Dominance in the left nostril tends to happen when we are relaxed and at ease. The dominance changes around every 20 minutes during the day. Single-nostril breathing can help regulate the left and right sides thereby creating balance in our nervous system.
4. Breathing more slowly and taking longer breaths can reduce your appetite according to some studies. While mindfulness techniques like visualization and guided imagery have shown to be highly effective for those struggling with food cravings and addiction, slow breathing exercises also proved effective.
5. It is normal to take around 16 breaths per minute. Asthmatics and people who hyperventilate often double this breathing rate. This leads to taking in more oxygen but expelling too much carbon dioxide, or CO2. When your CO2 is decreased you can’t get as much oxygen setting up a cycle whereby you breathe even faster.
6. Ancient yogis believed we only have so many breaths in our life. It’s considered within a normal range to take somewhere between 12 to 25 breaths per minute, based on your level of fitness. But the average person takes about 16 breaths per minute, or 960 breaths per hour, 23,040 breaths a day, 8,409,600 a year. If you lived to the age of 75, that would mean 630,720,000 breaths in your lifetime.
But if we could, why not stretch our life span out a bit longer by taking as many slow, deep breaths as possible?
7. Our breath is an indicator of our mood and our mood is an indicator of our breath. This means that if we change how we breathe we can change our mood. It also means that when our mood changes so does our breath. When it comes to stress, mindful breathing practices are a great tool to lower blood pressure, increase our lung capacity for oxygen, and in the long term, prevent heart disease.
Our brains are always reacting to situations based on our fight-or-flight mechanism, an inherent survival mechanism that surely protected us from fatal situations that occurred often in our more primitive days. In modern society, that mechanism still exists and our brains tend to apply it to the daily stresses of life that aren’t so life-threatening. With that, unfortunately, comes the stress response spiking cortisol and other stress hormones, which when released too often, can lead to chronic fatigue, depression, and disease. But don’t just take our word for it, check out Harvard Medical School’s research backing it.
8. There are some common breathing habits that we have that we may not even know about. They are the following:
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- Only breathing into the chest
- Inhalations are stronger than exhalations
- Breath-holding
- Mouth breathing
- Reverse breathing (where the diaphragm rises instead of falls on the inhale)
- Over-breathing
9. We breathe in and out of our nose during a yoga practice for a few reasons. The main one is that when we breathe like this we can’t take in so much air or expel so much air. So if we have to resort to opening our mouth to get more air it is an indicator that we have stepped into stressing or pushing our bodies.
10. Mouth-breathing can contribute to the following:
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- Misaligned bite
- Bad breath
- Snoring
- Sleep apnea
- Night-time urination
With the increasing research we have, showing the importance of breath and breathing habits, it’s becoming more and more clear that being mindful of your breath is incredibly beneficial to your overall health and wellbeing. So if you haven’t already, try practicing some mindful breathing techniques and watch how quickly the various systems of your body begin to respond.
About the Author
6 Ways to Become Fully Present With Suffering
Life is about learning balance and how we interact with the world around us. It is a constant learning experience, to which we will become familiar with all of the emotions that a human being has, some of which are more pleasant than others.
Suffering on Earth is derived from the collective emotion held within humanity, which is why it is so important to learn to heal yourself first to help heal the planet.
As many great teachers of the past and present have taught us, often times it is not the experience itself that is the problem, it is how our human conditioning has taught us how to react. We’ve all experienced suffering in various ways.
Though it is uncomfortable and ugly, it is also very important to love each part of ourselves as human beings; to do that we have to understand the full spectrum of the human experience…the yin and the yang, the light and the dark. They co-exist together for a reason.
Aim to Be Like a Child
If you have children or have been around a small child, you will know that their experience of life is very different than yours. Their reactions are very in the moment. When they are upset, uncomfortable, or hungry they cry. There is no holding back, and no misunderstanding how they truly feel.
As we get older we learn what is considered an “acceptable” way to act in society. We learn that we can’t just have a meltdown anywhere when we are feeling upset. There are very specific circumstances that allow us to cry or feel angry, and some of us even go as far as to completely shut down our ability to feel our true emotions. I call this being “emotionally constipated!”
Babies’ ability to feel fully in the moment is a gift, because once they fully feel it, they release it instantaneously. There is no need to relive the experience later. It often takes very little to distract them with a new idea and change their emotion quickly. As we get older it is important to remember that innate wisdom within our bodies, because they react in direct correlation with the information we give them.
Fully Experience Your Emotions in the Moment
When your life is turned upside down and emotions are all over the place, take yourself into the moment and simply feel whatever disturbance is going on without resisting it. Take a chance and look silly in public if you need to.
When you can fully experience your emotions in the moment{.inline-media .inline-video} and let them wash over you, that turmoil will not collect in your body in a negative way. It is only when you deny and resist it that it collects and becomes unhealthy.
When you begin to feel imbalance in your life, the most effective way to take care of yourself is to honor where you are without judging the experience. Don’t compare yourself to others, because you are a unique individual!
Your experience is your experience, and there is no right or wrong or normal and abnormal. You are creating your body and life experience every day, and it’s unlike anyone else’s body or life experience.
6 Ways to Be Present with Suffering
Here are some steps you can take in a moment of distress and suffering to relieve yourself:
1. Stop whatever you are doing, and go inward. Listen to your body and become fully present.
Don’t try to change the way you feel in this moment. Instead, feel it for what it is without resisting it.
Say in your mind, “I honor this feeling of ______, even though it makes me uncomfortable or scared in this moment.”
Focus on the sensation, and surround yourself in a beautiful picture that feels comfortable, loving, and safe to you. I like to picture myself in a field of flowers with a soft breeze blowing through me, washing away anything that no longer serves my highest good.
2. Let the emotions fly
Let yourself go! Experience the anger, frustration, sadness, joy, excitement, fear, surprise, disgust, disapproval, remorse, and all the in-betweens. The goal is to express it.
However, it is also important to remember to make sure you are not putting anyone in danger while you are doing this. Whatever you are feeling in this moment is perfect; there is nothing wrong with it!
3. Trust any messages that come through your body as divine guidance
You might notice some sensations, ideas, or thoughts through your body as you become fully present in your experience.
When we become still, we are more receptive to receiving divine guidance from our higher selves.
Trust this loving guidance, or simply soak in this beautiful light that is holding you. We all have access to it when we call upon it.
4. Stay Present
Stay with the feeling until you feel it has fully washed over you and can be released. Take your time and don’t be tempted to rush through it.
Remember your well-being is the most important thing right now. You cannot be present with others until you are fully present with yourself.
5. Wait for Release
Just like with a baby, sometimes it takes five minutes, and sometimes two hours before we reach a point of release, but it eventually always comes.
Most of us force ourselves to get up and “shake it off” before we’re really ready. All that leftover emotion builds up and is stored within the body, despite our belief that it is gone once we choose to think it’s gone. Once the release happens, the weight falls off and you can now resume your day with your full presence.
6. Remember That You’re Not Alone
When you’re feeling suffering of any kind in life (and there are many!), remember you’re not alone. Remember to claim your strength and ask for help when you need it. You can’t do it all on your own.
