By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“We often assume breathing is just a natural skill; everyone knows how to inhale and exhale. But breathing is a miracle. Being aware of our breath not only helps us manage the difficulties in everyday life, it also helps develop our wisdom and compassion. We can sit and breathe, but it is just as important to practice mindful breathing while we are moving. Life is a path, but life is not about getting to a certain place.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Breathing is essential for life and generally occurs automatically. It’s easy to take for granted as it’s been there our entire lives. Nevertheless, we become more aware of it when it varies with circumstances, such as when we exercise and also in emotional states, especially fear and anxiety. But we rarely notice it during everyday ongoing life. Yet, its characteristics are associated with our state of well-being. Slow deep breathing is characteristic of a healthy relaxed state.
Meditators have been trained to pay attention to and even focus on breathing. Meditation produces a relaxed state and during meditation, respiration slows and deepens. Meditation also, promotes health and well-being. All this would predict that meditation practice would result in slower deeper breathing in the individual even when they are not meditating. In today’s Research News article “Long-term mindfulness training is associated with reliable differences in resting respiration rate.” See:
or below or view the full text of the study at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895172/
Wielgosz and colleagues examine this question. They compared the resting respiration rates of long-term meditators to a matched group of non-meditators and found that the meditators had significantly lower respiration rates (11%) than the controls. They further explored the lower respiration rates in meditators and found that it was significantly related to the total number of hours that these practitioners had spent on meditation retreats and not to the hours spent in daily practice.
These are interesting results that suggest that long-term meditation practice that includes meditation retreats is associated with lower respiration rates. These lower rates, in turn, suggest that there was an improvement in the overall well-being of the practitioners. Meditation retreats allow for extended periods of calm and quiet that are unavailable during everyday life with all its demands and stressors. It is possible that these extended periods are necessary to have an overall sustained reduction in respiration rates and the suggested improvement in overall well-being. This clearly suggests that including retreats in a meditation practice is very important.
It needs to be kept in mind that causation cannot be determined in this study. It is possible that people who engage in long-term meditation and attend meditation retreats are characteristically calmer people who had lower respiration rates even before initiating meditation practice. It will require a study where baselines are established before a meditation practice is commenced and then randomly assigning volunteers to either meditation practice with or without retreats or to a no-meditation condition.
Regardless, relax with slower breathing with meditation.
“Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in. Regardless of our internal weather- our thoughts, emotions and perceptions- our breathing is always with us like a faithful friend. Whenever we feel carried away, or sunken in a deep emotion, or scattered in worries and projects, we return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind.” – Plum Village
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Wielgosz, J., Schuyler, B. S., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2016). Long-term mindfulness training is associated with reliable differences in resting respiration rate. Scientific Reports, 6, 27533. http://doi.org/10.1038/srep27533
Abstract
Respiration rate is known to correlate with aspects of psychological well-being, and attention to respiration is a central component of mindfulness meditation training. Both traditional contemplative systems and recent empirical evidence support an association between formal mindfulness practice and decreased respiration rate. However, the question of whether long-term mindfulness training is associated with stable, generalized changes in respiration has yet to be directly investigated. We analyzed respiration patterns across multiple time points, separated by two months or more, in a group of long-term mindfulness meditation practitioners (LTMs, n = 31) and a matched group of non-meditators (Controls, n = 38). On average, LTMs showed slower baseline respiration rate (RR) than Controls. Among LTMs, greater practice experience was associated with slower RR, independently of age and gender. Furthermore, this association was specific to intensive retreat practice, and was not seen for routine daily practice. Full days of meditation practice did not produce detectable changes in baseline RR, suggesting distal rather than immediate effects. All effects were independent of physiological characteristics including height, weight, body-mass index and waist-hip ratio. We discuss implications for continued study of the long-term effects of mindfulness training on health and well-being.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895172/