COVID-19 and BREATHING

In respiratory infections, the discomfort in the lungs and trachea (windpipe below the voicebox) causes or reflexively triggers automatic inhibition of inhalation to avoid the discomfort experienced when inhaling. This effect on breathing occurs in addition to the lungs becoming "waterlogged".

This reflexive inhibition of breathing commonly outlasts respiratory infections and becomes chronically depressed breathing. Notice if that's so, in your own case.

So, if have or you've had COVID-19, what follows is especially relevant, to you -- and if you haven't had it, it's still relevant, to you.

Videos on breathing have been appearing on YouTube.com. As a clinical somatic educator in practice since 1990, I'm putting in my 2-cents, here.

In breathing, EXHALATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN INHALATION. You exhale "to the bottom -- empty", keep air out and wait. When the powerful impulse to inhale occurs, you regulate your inhalation to be slow inhalation, evenly regulating the impulse to inhale. Let yourself inhale fully, to the maximum.

Hold the breath and while holding, relax. Then exhale by stages: Exhale a little bit and hold what's left. Exhale a little more and hold what's left -- like that, by stages, until you're "to the bottom -- empty". This portion of the sequence creates compression of the "air ball" in your lungs.

Then, begin, again -- two or three cycles. Exhale . . .

That action re-sets the breathing cycle for AUTOMATIC DEEP BREATHING (which is not "chest breathing -- which is actually shallow breathing, but which is belly-and-chest, or diaphragmatic, breathing).

Secondly, whatever well-meaning intention exists in some published video instruction to cough, coughing is an automatic response to respiratory infections. If coughing were effective, it would automatically be effective in cases of pneumonia. I'm not saying not to do it; I'm saying, it's not particularly effective (regardless of the appearance of medical authority). For one thing, it's too sudden, too fast to drive accumulated fluid out of the lungs. Sustained compression of the "air ball" in the lungs is much more likely to do anything helpful.

This "positive pressure" breathing is what hospital respirators do, mechanically, without the fine regulation of breathing to the body's actual, moment to moment needs that natural breathing involves.

• video on synergistic breathing training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBp70Y_q8Dw
• article on breathing | https://somatics.com/breathing.htm

For more instruction on better breathing (particularly useful in after-COVID-19 recovery), see <https://somatics.com/page7-breathing.htm>.

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Lawrence Gold has been in practice as a clinical somatic educator for the past 29 years, since 1990, with two years' on-staff experience at the Watsonville Community Hospital Wellness and Rehabilitation Center

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