Take a Breath.........
Take a long, deep, cleansing breath. In fact, take three! Breathe in deeply through your nose and out through your mouth, until you empty all the air from your lungs.
This is a centering technique that I use at the start of every yoga session, then throughout the practice I maintain focus on and awareness of my breath. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Every time my mind wanders off, I gently bring it back to focus on the breath once again. Then I leave the yoga studio feeling great and ready for the day ahead. However as soon as I open my laptop and get into the tasks of the day………everything changes. I love my work and can happily sit for hours absorbed in something or another, but during that 'screen-time' I completely forget my morning practice, I’m no longer tuning-in to my breath. I’m purely focusing on the task at hand, after some time passes (usually if I’m interrupted) I might notice that I’m holding my breath or tensing my upper body.
*Email apnea - a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email (Linda Stone, February 2008)
In 2008 a lady called Linda Stone coined the term ‘email/screen apnea’. She found that most people working (or playing) in front of a screen do not display the same quality of breath as they do when they’re not in front of the screen. So, what?
Stone’s findings support a small body of research that looks specifically at heart rate variability (HRV) and physiological changes when working at a screen; cited below from her article ‘Are you breathing? Do you have email apnea?’
- In 2009, Dr. Eric Peper, a researcher and Professor at UCSF, noted “sympathetic arousal” in college students texting messages on mobile devices. https://bit.ly/1tdF0BZ
- Researchers, Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Anthony Cardello, made headway formally validating the impact of email, using heart rate variability (HRV) testing. https://huff.to/1pvbzYZ
The science bit; shallow breathing restricts the oxygen to the brain which arouses the limbic system and we experience a ‘fight or flight’ response (sympathetic arousal). During this stress-response, the brain sends vital resources (such as glucose) to other parts of our body. This means that our pre-frontal cortex, or the ‘executive brain’, is impaired. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for a whole host of important functions such as: problem solving, rational decision making, creativity, collaboration and much more (as an aside, I highly recommend David Rock’s book: ‘Your Brain at work’, fascinating to read about his SCARF model and how he links the fight or flight response to ‘social threats’ that we experience at work, a future post perhaps). So, during the fight or flight response, our heart rate increases and we crave sugar and carbohydrates, sound familiar? While we may or may not notice that all of this is going on internally, when at our screen, it can have significant implications for our performance, health and well-being.
“It is the first thing we do,” says Dr. Margaret Chesney, a breathing researcher at UC San Francisco, “and it is the last thing we do. It’s really important, but we take it for granted.”
I wholeheartedly agree, most people, unless they suffer from respiratory illness, take it for granted. We have the saying ‘just take a breath’ often used to encourage someone to pause and slow down a bit. It’s a great strategy but taking a breath, a deep breath offers greater benefits than simply slowing us down (and keeping us alive). Noticing our breath and breathing deeply brings us into the moment which helps us to think clearly and feel well.
I was working with someone who created a trigger, so that every time she checked the time throughout the day, she reminded herself to take 3 deep breaths. Within a month it became a habit. She reported positive results and described feeling 'more composed’. She also noticed that every time she took the deep breaths, the tension that she held in her facial muscles dissipated. Paying attention to her breathing in this way immediately relaxed her physical body and her mind.
"Get out of your mind and into your body" something that my yoga teacher used to say and a mantra I find helpful both on and off the mat.
To be our best, to feel healthy and well starts with getting the basics right. I invite you to notice your breathing the next time you’re checking emails on your laptop or device (now doesn’t count because you’re probably very cognizant of your breathing if you’ve read this far). Does simply changing the quality of your breath change the quality of your day?
