During a massage or yoga class we most likely heard someone tell us to breathe into different parts of our bodies. Perhaps breathe into our shoulders, or ribs. What exactly does this mean? Don’t we always just breathe into our lungs. Yes, and no. Breath can be broken into 2 phases: the external exchanges of gases and the internal exchange of gases.
The external exchanges of gases is when oxygen diffuses (diffusion is the chemical process of particles going from high density to low density) from the alveoli (tiny sac of oxygen in the lungs) to deoxygenated blood in the pulmonary capillaries. As this happens carbon dioxide is released from the blood to the lungs, to be expired. This all takes place within the lungs.
The second phase of breath, the internal exchanges of gases, takes place throughout the body. The oxygenated blood travels from the lungs to the left atrium (the top chamber of the heart) and then is pushed out to the body by the left ventricle (the bottom chamber of the heart) to be dispersed throughout the body. As our blood washes through our body it diffuses oxygen into various cells while carbon dioxide diffuses to the blood. ) Our blood then returns to the right atrium and is pumped to our lungs from the right ventricle completing the cycle.
So we breathe oxygen into our lungs where it is fused with our blood. Our breath continues to be distributed among our many cell while our blood picks up carbon dioxide which is brought back to the lungs for expulsion. If we want to zoom in on this process a bit more
We can start with our digestion. Our gastrointestinal tract breaks down our food into base it’s building blocks, one of which is iron. Iron is absorbed into the circulatory system, mostly at the duodenum (the first section of the small intestines) , and binds to oxygen. This provides oxygen a way to travel throughout the body. As blood cells become restricted through the capillaries oxygen is squeezed out to the cells, which then become saturated themselves causing them to release carbon dioxide to the blood. Once the cells acquire our breath they mix their glucose with our oxygen creating adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The three (tri) phosphate molecules in ATP are quite unstable resulting in a phosphate molecule being repelled away creating ADP (adenosine di [2] phosphate) and energy. It is this energy that power us on a cellular level.
So as we breath, bringing consciounsess into an area, stretching it out, providing a bit more space for blood to fill, we are in fact very much so breathing into our ribs, our shoulders, our hips, wherever we deem it best to breath into. . If we pan our focus over to cultural wisdom we can find many languages fuse the idea of breath and spirit or life force. Of the many variations on this perinual connection best known are perhaps “Prana”, or “Chi”. Japanese have “Ki”, Tibetans speak of “rLung” or inner wind or life force. “Pneuma” means vital breath in Greek. Navajos have “Nilch’i”, or sacred life giving wind, while Native Hawaiian express this by as “Ha” And of course in 1977 “The Force” was introduced into pop culture. We talk about inspiration, what we take in from the world to feed our dreams, something that is as crucial to our spirits as air is to our bodies. We linguistically acknowledge the purging aspects of expiring. Expelling unwanted CO2 from our lungs, to that moment when something is no longer useful. To when we lose whatever it is that makes us alive.
So let’s take some time, and breathe some life into all of the parts of our bodies, especially the neglected ones.
