The Tao of Natural Breathing (7 page)

One of the ways that stress undermines our health is by increasing the production of the hormone cortisol, which in turn suppresses our immune system. A study published in the early 1990s in
The New England Journal of Medicine
found, for instance, that healthy participants who were given nose drops containing a cold virus were susceptible to the virus in direct relationship to the degree of emotional stress they were experiencing at the time. Other studies have shown that stress—and the fear and anxiety often associated with it—can cause autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis to worsen.
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Through learning how to sense ourselves more clearly, however, we will begin to understand that it is not always stress itself that is the problem—a certain amount of stress can actually be beneficial to our health—
but rather the habitual ways in which we respond to stress.
It is here that our emotions play a major role.

EMOTIONS AND THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM

Through self-sensing we will begin to experience for ourselves the relationship between our emotions and the so-called autonomic nervous system, which controls the smooth muscles and the glands. This system works either to excite or inhibit certain internal and external actions and secretions. As we learn how to sense the physiological effects of fear, anger, and anxiety in ourselves, for example, we will begin to understand experientially how they are bound up with the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which readies the body for “fight or flight” action. The sympathetic system acts in “sympathy” with our emotions, particularly those related to fear, danger, and excitement. Some signs that this system is turned on include sweating, dry mouth, and other forms of “arousal.” This system, with neurons located mainly in the chest and midback regions of the spine, communicates with the rest of the body by transmitting impulses from the brain through chains of sympathetic ganglia running down both sides of the spine. From the ganglia, nerve fibers carry impulses to the various internal organs. These nerve impulses decrease movement in the digestive organs, increase heart rate and blood pressure, constrict blood vessels, dilate (open up) airways in the lungs, release sugar stored in the liver, and flood the body with adrenaline and norepinephrine from the adrenal glands, so that more blood and energy are available for action.

The Survival Value of Negative Emotions

As troublesome as they are in our lives, it is clear—at least sometimes—that what we call “negative emotions” have important “survival” value. Many of our negative emotions are simply signals that something has gone wrong in our lives or that some action is necessary to avoid a potential problem. A student’s anxiety about an upcoming exam, or an executive’s anxiety about a financial report that is due the next day, can play a beneficial role in stimulating appropriate preparation, as long as the anxiety does not become so excessive that it causes fear and a lack of concentration. A woman’s anger toward a man who physically or psychologically abuses her may motivate her to leave the relationship or to find a healthier relationship with someone else, as long as it doesn’t become so strong that she becomes violent. A mother’s anger toward a teenage daughter who stays out all night may be what is necessary to motivate both mother and daughter to try to communicate with each other in a new way. Our lives are filled with many examples of how our so-called negative emotions, as long as they do not become excessive, can provide important information about what is happening in our lives—information that can help us take intelligent actions on behalf of ourselves and others.

Unfortunately, many of our negative emotions seem to quickly reach a point where they have no apparent solution, and we frequently find ourselves unable to learn anything from them or to do anything about them. These emotions leave us with pounding hearts, contracted muscles, poor digestion, constipation, tension, and so on. Over time, these conditions can become chronic and can consume the energy we need for healing and for inner growth. Once these conditions become habitual, the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, designed to put the brakes on the sympathetic nervous system, will have little power to bring about more than temporary relief—unless we can learn how to consciously turn it on for longer periods of time.

Learning to Turn On the Parasympathetic Nervous System

To learn how to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system, it is useful to know something about its organization. The neurons for this system reside mainly in certain cranial nerves, such as the vagus nerve, coming from the brain stem, and in the lower-back region of the spine. The parasympathetic ganglia do not run down the spine, but instead are located near the organs that they influence. Impulses coming from these ganglia reduce the heart rate, dilate the blood vessels, increase digestive peristalsis, and constrict the air passages in the lungs, and thus help the body slow down and restore itself.

How can we intentionally turn on this system, our relaxation response, without the outside help of psychologists, massage therapists, and so on? The key is our
attention.
We know from experience that when we are tense or “stressed out” our attention—directed by the sympathetic nervous system—automatically focuses on the supposed cause of our tension, the compulsive thoughts and feelings that arise in relation to it, or the particular unpleasant physical symptoms we are experiencing. As a result, our experience of ourselves becomes so narrow that we cannot even imagine an alternative. To learn how to relax in such situations, we need to learn how to work actively with our attention, to widen it to include the parts of ourselves that are not in the grip of the negativity we are experiencing. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is through self-sensing. According to Ernest Rossi, a pioneer in the field of mind/body interaction, “You simply close your eyes and tune into the parts of your body that are most comfortable. When you locate the comfort you simply enjoy it and allow it to deepen and spread throughout your body all by itself. Comfort is more than just a word or a lazy state. Really going deeply into comfort means that you have turned on your parasympathetic system—your natural relaxation response.”
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As we shall see later, natural breathing plays an important role in learning how to go “deeply into comfort,” and thus in learning how to use our awareness to harmonize the aggressive and restorative functions of our nervous system.
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What’s more, since natural breathing massages our internal organs and relaxes our lower back, it has a beneficial influence on the parasympathetic nerves and ganglia in these areas.

Unfortunately, most of us are not very good at sensing ourselves and have little awareness of the extent to which our perception and behavior are conditioned by emotions such as fear, anger, and anxiety. We have become so accustomed to high levels of stress and negativity in our lives that we take it as “normal,” not realizing the tremendous toll it takes on our health and vitality. The noise produced by this stress makes it almost impossible to hear the quiet, ever-present intelligence of our own bodies. Unable to experience this inner intelligence, we exacerbate our situation by seeking quick relief through excessive stimulation of some kind—alcohol, drugs, tobacco, caffeine, food, sex, television, and so on. Sometimes, when we wake up for a moment to the senselessness of our situation, we may try to deal rationally with the stresses we face. But our minds by themselves have little power to “figure out” effective solutions—especially in an “information society” that floods our consciousness with negative news and images from around the world. The end result is the accumulation of more and more tension, a sense of helplessness, and the eventual appearance of various chronic symptoms and ailments in our lives—many of which are not just the result of stresses we face, but also of the way we try to escape them.

Coping with the Effects of Stress Is Not the Solution

Unable to figure out effective solutions to the many stresses in our lives, we have over time learned various ways to “cope” with their effects on us instead. Some of us, for example, simply vent our negative emotions, especially anger, on others, believing that this is good for us. Recent studies suggest, however, that venting our anger causes us to get more angry, not less, and thus increases our health risks.
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What’s more, such an action simply spreads our negativity to others, adding to their own problems.

The expression of negative emotions, however, is probably not nearly as prevalent as finding ways to avoid experiencing them. As children, some of us learned how to use fantasy and repression to shut ourselves off from the painful feelings of contradiction that we felt when our parents did not seem to accept us as we were, but rather demanded that we “grow up” according to their image. As adults, many of us have learned how to “swallow” our negative emotions and take refuge in what we consider to be our more positive ones. We have learned how to suppress our negative emotions in order to function in what we believe to be a reasonable way based on our self-image. But we know by the scientific law of conservation of energy that the neurochemical energy of these emotions cannot be destroyed—it can only be transformed. And we also know, if we look carefully, that this energy is often transformed into kinetic or mechanical energy that acts, without our awareness, on the nerves, tissues, structures, and movements of our bodies.

The repression or suppression of emotions manifests itself not only in our postures and movements, but also in tensions buried deep in our bodies, tensions that consume our energy and undermine our physical and psychological health. By learning how to sense these tensions in ourselves, we will eventually come face-to-face with our mostly unconscious emotions of anger, worry, fear, anxiety, and so on. The goal is not to get rid of these so-called negative emotions—this would be both impossible and undesirable—but rather to find the courage to experience them fully, to open them to the transformative light of impartial awareness. From the Taoist perspective, when we become fully aware of our negative emotions without amplifying them or trying to defend ourselves against them, the neurochemical energy they activate in us can be transformed into the pure energy of vitality. As the Taoists might say, “clouds, rain, and lightening are as necessary to our environment as sunshine and calm. Without a harmonious balance of both kinds of weather, nature would become barren.” It is through our breath, especially through natural breathing, that we can begin to discover this dynamic harmony in ourselves. It is through deep, comfortable, natural breathing that we can begin to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and thus the process of healing—of becoming whole again.

THE IMPORTANCE OF “EFFORTLESS EFFORT”

As we’ve seen, the work with breathing starts with sensing the
inner
atmosphere of our organism—the basic emotional stance we take toward ourselves and the world. When I first began to work seriously with my breath in order to come into more direct touch with myself, however, I quickly saw that most of my “efforts” were based on force, on will power, not on skill and sensitivity, and that instead of working
with
the laws of natural breathing, I was working
against
them. In short, I was using my sympathetic nervous system to try to turn on my parasympathetic system. The more I “tried” to breathe naturally, the more tension I created in myself. This was an important discovery for me, because it demonstrated the fundamental way in which I undermined my efforts in almost every area of my life. I had learned about the importance of “effortless effort” from my various teachers—the importance of acting not just from
doing
but also from
being
, from a deep inner sensitivity to my situation—but it wasn’t until I started working in depth with the inner sensation of my body that I began to integrate my understanding of the physiological and biochemical reasons for this approach with the actual practice of it.

As I went deeper into the meaning of effortless effort, I began to understand through self-sensing that my usual efforts—often driven by unseen attitudes and emotions—brought with them unnecessary muscular tension, which not only wasted my energy but also flooded my body with excessive adrenaline and metabolic wastes. Tension creates heat, and my efforts “heated me up,” increasing my heart and breath rates. What’s more, this unnecessary tension caused my sensory system to go on alert, sending distress signals to my brain. The more tension I had, the busier my brain become in trying to deal with it. The busier my brain became in dealing with it, the more trouble I had focusing on other matters of importance in my life.

As we begin to learn how to sense ourselves—especially in relation to our breathing—we will quickly see that the sensation of intense effort in the many areas of our lives often signals a “wrong” relationship not only to what we are doing, but, perhaps more importantly, to ourselves. It is not wrong in any moral or ethical way, but simply because it is counterproductive—it goes against the laws of harmonious functioning. Wrong effort constricts our breathing, cuts us off from our own energy, and produces actions that we did not intend. As Moshe Feldenkrais has pointed out, “the sensation of effort is the subjective feeling of wasted movement … of other actions being enacted besides the one intended.”
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It is clear to me today that as we learn to sense ourselves more completely and impartially, we free up the inner intelligence of our minds and bodies to learn new, better ways to accomplish our aims and promote health in our lives.

“The Law of Least Effort”

To understand how this is possible, it is important to understand that the brain learns and performs best when we use the least possible effort to accomplish a given task. For thousands of years, Taoist masters have emphasized this principle through their advice to use no more than 60 or 70 percent of our capacity in carrying out physical or spiritual practices. The Weber-Fechner psychophysical law demonstrates one reason why this is so important, since it states that the “senses are organized to take notice of differences between two stimuli rather than the absolute intensity of a stimulus.”
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When we try hard “to do” something, when we use unnecessary force to accomplish our goals, our whole body generally ends up becoming tense. This tension makes it more difficult for our brain and nervous systems to discern the subtle sensory impressions necessary to help carry out our intention in the most creative way possible.