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There are two primary breathing patterns that are associated with breathlessness or stress: thoracic breathing and hyperventilation.
The first pattern, thoracic breathing, consists of breathing predominately with secondary respiratory muscles (the muscle of the upper chest, back and neck). They are called secondary respiratory muscles because they are biologically designed to come into play only when our sympathetic nervous system is activated. This activation is known as the fight-or-flight response, in which the body readies itself to meet real or imagined danger.
In thoracic breathing the person tightens the abdomen and inhales into the upper chest. The physiological effects of this pattern include increased heart rate and blood pressure, gastrointestinal distress, asthmatic symptoms, neck and should tension, anxiety and depression. The breath may be shallow, punctuated by breath holding or by gasping.
The second pattern, hyperventilation, is not usually recognized except in its extreme forms. It can, however, be both subtle and chronic. This pattern is characterized by rapid, shallow breathing punctuated by frequent sighs. Hyperventilation causes too much carbon dioxide to be expired and results in an increase alkalinity of the blood. This alkalinity can cause anxiety, phobia, and dizziness, as well as a vast array of other physical and psychological symptoms.
Why do we distort our natural breath? One possible explanation is that we have responded physiologically to our accelerated environment, we are literally too busy to catch our breath. Life is fast these days.
The demands are very real and difficult to meet without succumbing to “hurry-up sickness.” To meet the pace, we have replaced whole-body activities with automated technologies. Compare chopping vegetables by hand, shoveling in the garden, washing clothes in the river, or any number of virtually obsolete activities to using the machines that have speeded up or taken over these tasks. These machines accomplish tasks quickly, but when we use them, we bypass the normal rhythmic structure of human movements. The rapid, mechanized movements of machines are biologically out
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