Volume 5, Number 11, December 2006

Quote From Moshe: “Doing does not mean knowing.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 46

Letting Some Air Out of A Fundamental Assumption

As I’ve tried to relate on these pages, The Feldenkrais Method is not a way to move better. It’s a means of changing one’s way of thinking. The result of such a reorganization of thought has startling implications for health. This month I’d like to give you an example of the way in which my Feldenkrais training has impacted the way I think about myself.

My wife has asthma, and she was having some severe attacks. In an attempt to help her, I put out a request to some of my fellow practitioners for advice on what kind of work to do for asthma. I was expecting lessons that enabled better breathing, but one responder took me in a different direction: He said he’d cured himself of asthma with the approach of a scientist named Buteyko, and he gave me a website to peruse. I’m naturally suspicious of “cures,” especially when I haven’t heard much about them, but I like to give my colleagues the benefit of the doubt.

Among Buteyko’s postulates is the following: “It is known that CO2 deficiency causes spasms in the smooth muscles of bronchi, cerebral and circulatory vessels, intestines, biliary ducts and other organs… Late in the 19th century Werigo, a Russian researcher from the town of Perm, discovered a peculiar dependence: as a result of diminishing the CO2 content in blood, the oxygen binds with the blood haemoglobin and impairs the transport of oxygen to brain, heart, kidneys and other organs. In other words, it can be described as follows: the deeper the breathing, the less amount of oxygen reaches the brain, heart, kidneys and other organs. Brain oxygen starvation (hypoxia) caused by deep breathing promotes more intense bronchial and cardiac spasms…Oxygen starvation in combination with overventilation produces a false feeling of air deficit, excites the respiratory centre, enhances breathing intensity and adds to the progress in disease development. CO2 deficiency in the nerve cells excites all the structures of the nervous system thus making the process of breathing still more intensive.”[1]

I am not qualified to judge the medical or scientific validity of Buteyko's ideas. On the other hand, I found it absolutely fascinating the idea that deep breathing could be detrimental and shallow breathing could be beneficial. As with all assumptions, I had always taken it as a given that deep breathing was the best. Once I read the website on Buteyko I found myself able to question that fundamental assumption, and my Feldenkrais-trained mind got to work.

If we pretend that Buteyko's assertion is correct, then the fundamental question becomes "Do I need to take a deep breath?" Buteyko makes a comment on the site that really resonated with me: “The [Buteyko Method] will win when every human being realises that his in-born greediness (including breathing) to take more is the cause of disasters, diseases and collapses.”

Was I indulging in a compulsion to take in more air than I need? I’ve experienced similar problems around overeating and oversleeping. The notion, however poetic it might be, does not seem so far-fetched when I look at the physiological effects of “overbreathing.”

I spent the day exploring the idea of listening to the depth of my breathing at different times of the day and after different circumstances. It was the first time I've ever done this without the assumption that more breath is better. In the past I've always assumed that such awareness would lead me to deeper, "healthier" breathing. Instead I found that I breathe more deeply under certain times of stress. I questioned that need in those times and did not breathe more deeply. I dwelled in the uncomfortable sensation of feeling like I needed a deep breath without attempting to alleviate that sensation.

When I restrained myself from breathing deeply, I found that I did not suffer any feeling of suffocation or oxygen depletion. It seems that I didn't really need to breathe deeply after all. So what did I need?

Perhaps it was the release of tension that the deep breathing enabled. At the same time I wanted to breathe deeply I was experiencing tension in my jaw, neck and tongue. This is an area where my awareness is very spotty and it's caused me a lot of trouble with my eyesight, my swallowing, and sophisticated use of my arms and legs. Paradoxically, deep breathing tended to inhibit the movement of this area, and shallow breathing kept me still enough to focus on it and gain the awareness to relieve some of the tension.

There were two ways to go from this point. The first was to address the emotional need to escape the stress. In that scenario I found that simply being still and continuing shallow breathing was sufficient to calm me, because once I was aware in a physical way of my emotional stress it no longer generated a trance. I could deal with it directly instead of being controlled by it.

The second way to go came to me after I ate dinner. A couple of years ago I had already been exploring the "take too much" syndrome as regards to food. While I am very thin I am still a chronic overeater. This causes me no weight problems, but it has caused me other problems. It's entirely emotional in nature. I found that learning to tolerate the sensation of hunger, much as I was now tolerating the sensation of "breathlessness," generated a much healthier result than eating profusely, which left me feeling bloated, sick, and often still hungry.

I've still cycled with overeating and did so again tonight. I found to my surprise that overeating triggered a deep-breathing response. This was both physical and emotional. Emotional in that the same thing that led me to feel hungry was now leading me to feel breathless. Physical in that my stomach was distended, hindering a certain movement of part of my body around the breathing mechanism of the diaphragm. Once I realized this, I found that moving the diaphragm intentionally in the absence of breathing generated the satisfaction I needed. Breathing had created a certain soothing movement, but the movement could be divorced from the breathing.

While I am interested in Buteyko’s ideas, this issue is not meant to be a blind endorsement of his work. Rather, it is an illustration of the remarkable work that can be done from discovering a seemingly unquestionable assumption, and then questioning it.

In an ATM lesson, one goes through a very similar process. Through a series of movements one reaches a crisis either in confidence or physicality. The crisis can only be resolved when one is able to recognize an assumption that can be questioned. The act of questioning a perceived limit opens up possibilities, not only in movement but in all aspects of life. Through my training, I’ve become a habitual questioner (an interesting paradox). I believe that everyone can benefit from a similar ability to question, and that Feldenkrais is an ideal means of learning to do so, as it relies on movement as the teacher. Whether this is an assumption that I need to jettison remains to be seen!