How can breathing go wrong?

There are two main reasons why a person develops dysfunctional breathing:

• Stress
• Practising to breathe deeply in the belief that this is good for you

A common myth of breathing is that breathing deeply and forcefully is good for you because it rids the lungs of stale air. In actual fact, the 'stale' air in your lungs is what keeps you alive. If you changed the composition of this air by too much, then you would become seriously ill because a drop in the carbon dioxide pressure in the lungs allows extra carbon dioxide to leave the blood stream, endangering your health. However, if you believe this myth and notice that you are breathing more heavily while resting, then you will think that this is a good thing, and will be unlikely to change this abnormal breathing pattern.

Most of us perceive 'stress' as things that are causing us worry, but stress means far more than that. Stress can also include things such as pain, being ill, over-eating, smoking, eating foods or drinking liquids that are not good for us, doing too much exercise, or not doing enough, being too hot or too cold, being exposed to harmful things in our surroundings, strong emotions...

It doesn't matter what kind of stress it is because all kinds increase the breathing pattern as part of the fight or flight response that occurs during stress. Part of this response is to breathe more air in order to run or fight.

If the stress is long-term, such as when a person has an allergic reaction to pollen that is in the air for weeks, then the automatic breathing pattern can change permanently. Instead of only increasing your breathing when you are rushing or working harder physically, your breathing tends to be a little heavier when you are resting.

This means that a habit of hyperventilation begets hyperventilation because once the breathing pattern has adapted to a different (increased) pattern, it will retain this new pattern.