2. Breath Control

If you’ve read the previous post - Hydration -  you may have noticed how I talk about the body in a rather clinical slash detached way. As if it’s not “me” or “you” but rather “it”. I shall continue the trend here.

Let’s start by defining a favorite term:

Sympathetic Override - When the body makes a judgment call against your desire and you experience being victimized by your body’s overwhelming willpower through the primal drive for perceived safety and comfort.

With that being our leading statement, I’d like to share a little story time where I wax wistful for a period (it’s relevant I promise) whilst I recall a lovely memory from lifetimes past. I was maybe 9 years old.

cue thought bubble, wavy screen animation, and white screen filter at 33% opacity

I remember the thrill of having the strength to climb around on playground sets and use the monkey bars with relative ease as I did three-quarters of my life ago. I often envisioned myself the action hero of my life then, and made a dare to myself, as I oft’ did. The dare was that I could swing in such a way that I would skip the last 4 bars and "lache” my way to the end platform ahead. I was feeling it. I kicked my legs back for one swing, let’s get it! 2nd backswing, eyes on the prize, 3rd and final backswing, and before I knew it, I had mistimed letting go of the bar and ended up perfectly parallel to the ground just under the height of the monkey bars. Maybe 6 feet mid-air doing a “suicide” like the break-dancers do.

Also before I knew it, my back was on the ground and the shock my torso experienced caused my diaphragm to spasm and completely cramp up. I “knocked the wind” out of myself. I did everything I could to gasp for air and immediately began to panic when my body wouldn’t inhale. Make no mistake, I was inhaling. Or rather pulling to inhale. My diaphragm was locked and would not budge. Have you ever heard a kid make this weird grunting voice while saying “I can’t breathe I can’t breathe”? I sure did. The best I could whilst not being able to breathe that is.

Eventually, my diaphragm quit its sh*t and let me breathe again, but I was damn near blacked out. (yes, the momentary profanity was situationally appropriate. There’s no more I promise.)

That’s when I realized that “I” am NOT my body.

The same type of thing happened when I would get tickled. I was SO ticklish. And when certain people found out, I was also a prime tickletarget. Toothpick skinny and girlish like young boys are, when “bees came buzzing around the barn” I often found myself being incapable of any activity outside of writhing full body contortions like Emily Rose and helplessly possessed by laughter, sometimes even before being actually touched! It’s a confuddling conundrum for the brain and body to assimilate such polarity through the joy and pain of it all.

How about that impossibly strong reflex to inhale when a person gets splashed by (or submerged in - Wim Hof woot woot!) cold water?

Yeah, welcome to the topic of breath control, or leash control rather.

Lain before you are three prime examples of various sympathetic overrides where the body just does what makes the most sense to it by way of its mechanical and reflexive nature when under stressors of varying types. This is the general problem we all face, and it’s discoverable in EVERYTHING we do.

Breath control is more than just “breathing.” It’s being in a determinate state of mind to maintain your pace and flow of breath regardless of the stimulus your body experiences. Cold immersions, painful sensations of all kinds really, and yes even ticklishness. So how do we accomplish the ability to maintain our breath and not let it get all out of hand?

I will say that certain stimuli can feel SO impossible to control the body’s reaction to, like getting the wind knocked out of you or suffering an eternal inhale with cold immersion, for sure. But I have also found that practice through incremental exposure to more and more challenging stimuli as a person feels ready for the ride is totally a “thing”. BUT WHY IS IT EVEN IMPORTANT TO CONTROL OUR BREATH IN THESE MOMENTS?

Okay, let’s just paint the picture of what reality looks like where mindful breathing doesn’t exist.

— Someone insults you because you offended them with your shirt. Instead of controlling your breath and putting things into perspective, your blood boils and you get offended that someone is offended at you being you, so you boomerang the abuse and the situation escalates. Quickly.

— You find yourself stretching into the splits (because it’s supposed to be good for you, right?) but you realize about 15 seconds into it that you’re probably stretching too far. You struggle to get out of the stretch, and in the struggle, you end up actually straining your muscles, keeping you out of the gym on leg day for a couple of weeks

— You’re the operator of a mall kiosk, and you have an extreme sensitivity to ticklishness. Two people end up overpowering you by tickling you into submission and steal your only merchandise. Okay, we did get a bit whimsical with that one. The point remains.

Not only does practicing breath control increase your willpower, it also helps you to realize how quickly you can condition your body to adapt to new and potentially “threatening” stimuli that your body would normally outright reject. The benefit? Anti-fragility, in a hyphenated word. You become less controlled by your natural reflexes, and are able to curb your animalistic nature so you can transcend the hype of a moment and act more in alignment with the “tame”, logical, thinker part of you. Your intangible self.

Thanks to the aforementioned Viking god and hero to the global health community, Jedi master Wim Hof has revealed incredible insights into what the body is capable of by using mindful breathwork and having a disciplined spirit. He was “taught by nature” how to breathe mindfully, and was only led to the extremes of ice water immersion through the most immensely and dreadfully emotionally painful time of his life. Immersion was the only thing that could break his psyche to catalyze his healing beyond the dissociative numbness that betrayal, grief, overwhelm, and the deepest of sadness would bestow.

I thank God often for this man. For sticking it out and letting his “mess” also serve as his message. Because of his contributions to science, we’ve seen how even the immune system is immensely affected by vigorous breathwork. These studies have also showcased the body’s ability to adapt to extreme circumstances in a superhuman way.

So here’s my personal take on it all. I’mma try and make this quick.

Human is just a type of animal. The human is this creature that has all the tools and capacity for acting “civilized”. Same as with anyone else. This whole animal body has its own intelligence and mechanisms for making sure it stays alive, and when overwhelmed it curls up and plays dead like my diaphragm did under those monkey bars in ‘99.  The animal is our physical self. Our soma.

Our invisible selves are the parts of us that make meaning. The aspect that identifies as the “tame and reasonable”. The logical and metacognitive self. The observer and seer. The part of me that was breathing when my diaphragm said “wut?”

In my professional experience, in order for the intangible part of ourselves to integrate with the tangible part of ourselves, we must be in control of the “leash” of the breath. When the breath escapes me, I feel the leash of somatic control slip my grasp. When I force my soma to obey and I am deliberate and disciplined with my breathing mechanizer, the body ends up behaving and quits whatever the reflex was that drove the body to pull so hard on the leash in the first place.

Mindful breathing is what down-regulates our nervous system and brings us back to a calm baseline. It’s how we endure pain gracefully, it’s how we sustain control in tough moments, it’s how we sink deeper into a stretch or exert massive force. Breath control makes us superhuman. Above the animal.

How To Do The Breath Control Thing:

Step 1 - experience a stressful stimulus, whether it be nearing the limits of a stretch, extinguishing a flame from a match with your fingertips, stepping into a cold bath, popping a pimple, or foam rolling the quads.

Step 2 - force yourself to breathe deliberately in and deliberately out as you do your absolute best to sustain the thing you’re doing and relax simultaneously.

Step 3 - win control as the body adapts to your command and makes the experience suck less.

Now realize that if the stimulus is just TOO intense, your body’s reflex will overpower you and you’ll find yourself only holding your breath. This is where you need to listen to your body and respect its protective mechanisms and thank it for doing a great job. In the words of Wim Hof, “never force.”

One romantic thought before I finish here.

I love how the breath seems to serve as the bridge to our ability to control the otherwise uncontrollable autonomic nervous system functions. There’s similarity in how, when we make the intangible air useful to us through the tangible process of breathing, we are also unifying and coordinating the intangible and tangible parts of ourselves: our spirit and soma. Mmm what a beautiful thought. Like a thought flower.

Namaste

PS - The whole breath control thing works SO much better when you’re hydrated, so make sure and recognize hydration as Ritual 1 and breath control as Ritual 2 in a FOUR Ritual system of wellness and somatic control.

You’re favorite LMT,