Breathing Habit Deterioration Is Like Boiling A Frog
Breathing is something you do all day every day. Yet, I bet you’ve barely given breathing a second thought, unless of course you’ve noticed a problem with your breathing. Why is that I wonder?
Why have you never thought about how to breathe properly?
In my opinion there are 3 key reasons:
You started life breathing well
You never received healthy breathing education
Your breathing habits have been deteriorating so slowly that you didn’t notice
Let deep dive into number 3:
Gradual breathing habit deterioration
Have you ever heard the fable about boiling a frog? The idea is that if you put a frog into boiling water, it would leap straight out. If however, you put a frog into lukewarm water and raise the temperature gradually, it will be boiled alive as it doesn’t notice the change. This story is often used as a metaphor and it fits this example well.
Just like the frog’s water, imagine your breathing is deteriorating so slowly that you don’t notice the difference.
You drop your tongue to the bottom of your mouth
You start to mouth breathe more regularly
You start to breathe slightly faster and more shallowly into the upper chest
Your diaphragm becomes weaker and breathing during exercise lifts the upper chest too
Eventually you might find yourself breathless or anxious, having panic attacks, struggling to breathe through your nose, snoring heavily, struggling on staircases or feeling tight and shallow as you breathe. It didn’t came on suddenly though.
A gentle decline thanks to poor posture, high stress work periods, increased responsibility, traumatic events, lack of movement etc. You might have wrongly put it down to aging. Another reason might be that you have interpreted what breathing ‘should’ be, wrongly. You think you ‘need more air’. You think you need to breathe faster to perform better. You think you should lift your upper chest when attempting a ‘deep breath’ because that is what your teacher, cartoons, yoga instructor taught you.
Breathing education is so poor, and what little there is can be easily misinterpreted.
Is there anything above that you recognise?
Sudden breathing habit deterioration
Now imagine, you had an instant change to the breathing habits. This could be because of an accident or an illness. Your breathing habits could even change due to traumatic events. You are distinctly aware that there is a problem. You now want to find a solution, but the problem is, you’ve never received a healthy breathing education.
Where would you go?
A GP who isn’t trained in breathing retraining? If this is you, the likelihood is that you’ve been left to struggle through.
Client Example
To give you an example, my client’s larynx (airway) was cut by a rope aged 16. He was fortunate to survive and had a lot of medical care to rehabilitate. It wasn’t until he was 41 that he was made aware he could retrain his breathing habits.
I had no idea how this was going to work because I had never come across someone like him before. What I could see though is that his basic breathing habits were not healthy or optimal.
He was scared to go to sleep due to sleep apnoea and waking with panic in the night. He was exhausted all the time and wasn’t able to sleep near his family because of how loud his snoring was. He wasn’t able to do sport because he would collapse to the floor after only a short exertion.
Want to know what happened to him with breathing retraining?
This client kindly recorded the story of his challenges and huge life changing progress after just 6 weeks of working with me. You can listen here:
What next?
If you are struggling with any of the symptoms or breathing issues above, please do get in touch. You don’t have to continue struggling alone.
I provide free 20 minute breathing assessment calls.
If you aren’t ready for that yet, or want to ask some questions, just email me on jane@canidoitmyself.com.
Who am I?
My name is Jane Tarrant. I’m a Breathing Retrainer & Healthy Breathing Educator. My mission is to lead global education on healthy breathing and breathing retraining, in a simple, accessible way. I work with individual clients, groups and corporate teams. I’m also the author of ‘Rose Loses Her Nose’, the first educational children’s book of its kind, educating both children and parents on healthy breathing. I therefore now also work with families.