Pathways to Healing

by Elaine Zablocki

STORY TITLE:

Breathe OUT for Well-Being

We tend to take breathing for granted. After all, we’ve been doing it forever. Our breath goes in and out, in and out, and we don’t think about it. We don’t pay attention to it.

Betsy Thomason, BA, RRT, believes it’s time to pay attention to the breath. She’s one of those rare people who notices the process of breathing and the many ways it affects bodily functions. “Breathing affects every organ and cell in your body,” she says. “Fast, shallow, inefficient breathing activates adrenalin and other counterproductive hormones, so you end up feeling revved up and tired at the same time, all the time.”

Thomason’s childhood desire to learn how to paddle a canoe, fulfilled as a young adult, led to her becoming a breathing expert. In 1981 she created an organization called Adventures for Women to share the wisdom of being outdoors. In the process, she learned how to get up mountains without huffing and puffing, using the BreatheOutDynamic system (BODs) developed by Olympic cycling coach Ian Jackson.

An elementary school teacher who took time off to have children, Thomason later trained as a respiratory therapist to increase her knowledge of breathing and the human body. “During my two years of training, I discovered that conventional respiratory therapy focuses on mechanical ventilation and medications. It’s not about how to use your body efficiently and effectively in the breathing process.”

After receiving her associate’s degree in respiratory therapy, Thomason spent two years working in the ICU to give herself a thorough grounding in hospital-based respiratory therapy. “I recall a patient who was intubated, anxious, and fighting the ventilator. I really wanted to help her, so I tried a new idea. I asked her if she had a good imagination, and she indicated that she did. I asked her to imagine that she was blowing up a balloon. As she did that, the ventilator stopped racing. Her blood pressure normalized. Her oxygen saturation improved. This patient taught me the power of the imagination and the outbreath. With her imagined outbreath, she was in fact activating her parasympathetic nervous system, the system that relaxes you.”

Thomason worked at an ALS clinic in Manhattan for 11 years, testing the lung function of people with neuromuscular weakness. She wanted to provide more than just testing, and she developed quick ways to help people learn to use their outbreath for relaxation. “I would ask a patient to hold up a finger and pretend to blow on a pinwheel, and keep it spinning comfortably. Their breathing would automatically slow and their belly would go in during each outbreath. Then it would relax and expand for each in breath. I’m a better respiratory therapist because I was first of all a breathing trainer, and I was creative in working with patients to achieve well-being.”

Just Breathe Out – A How-to-Breathe Guidebook

In 2016 Thomason published Just Breathe Out: Using Your Breath to Create a New, Healthier You. She introduces her readers to the BreatheOutDynamic system, described as

focused breathing with emphasis on the active, spine-stretching outbreath and passive, relaxed inbreath. “This cycle of outbreath and inbreath is the opposite of what is considered ‘normal’ breathing,” she says. “Breathing is essential for life, but HOW you breathe affects your

well-being. This outbreath focus promotes relaxation, increased energy, and management of stress and pain.”

The ideas in the book are based on methods developed by Jackson, Thomason’s personal experience with BODs, as well as her professional experiences as a wilderness guide and respiratory therapist. “Actually, being an elementary school teacher has helped me because breathing is very elementary, very basic,” she says. “When teaching outdoor skills, I wanted to teach beginners and start with basic subjects so people would have a good foundation for developing advanced skills. Now I’m teaching the most basic of all subjects – breathing.”

This book provides the tools for developing a user-friendly body. It includes basic instructions to develop outbreath awareness, and then helps the reader choreograph their outbreath with movement, exercise, and activities of daily living. Thomason says, “Muscles are smart, but they are slow learners, so practice is essential.” She recommends practicing three times a day. “Find a quiet place with no distractions – perhaps when you are waking up, or sitting in a straight back chair, or before a meal. With this quiet BODs practice you will become deeply acquainted with your body and experience the ebb and flow of your breath.”

She uses a bellows as a mental image to encourage people to explore this new way of breathing. “If you push the air out of your body using your belly, creating a vacuum, the same amount of air comes bounding back automatically the instant your belly expands, creating suction. Try this long, active, spine-stretching outbreath followed by a brief, passive, relaxed inbreath.”

Why Do Breath Patterns Matter?

Personally, when I start to pay attention to my breath, I realize most of the time I’m breathing with the top six inches of my chest. Most of the time I’m think, think, thinking, and not aware of my body or my breath. I asked Thomason whether this is normal.

She responded that unfortunately, in our 21^st century culture, many people are used to fast, shallow breaths. “The normal breathing rate is said to be 12 to 20 breath per minute, but nowadays most people are breathing faster than that, and they’re not even aware of it,” she says. “We are all in a hurry. Our cars are fast, our schedules are packed, and we’re all trying to move fast. The human body has never gone so fast before.”

It’s worth taking the time to slow down and focus on the outbreath, because this has long-term physical and mental benefits, Thomason says. “The outbreath energizes and relaxes everybody because the outbreath activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which relaxes you. The inbreath activates the sympathetic nervous system, which revs you up.”

Mike Ramsay, MD, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management at Baylor University Medical Center, wrote the foreword to Just Breathe Out. When he tried the BODs program, he was surprised to experience the profound effect. “I started by spending 30 minutes first thing in the morning working at the active process of breathing out…. While working through the BODs process, I started to use muscles that I have only been conscious of in the gym…. My spine awakens and gets involved,” he writes. “Now, weeks into my BODs program, I realize that I am a little more lithesome – I can bend a little easier – and a spring has come back into my step…. In this book, Betsy Thomason takes us to another level of physical and mental performance that improves both physical and cognitive functions.” But can the BreatheOutDynamic system really help people who have such individual needs and abilities? “The body is very smart,” Thomason observes. “One of the key messages of the book is that the body is smart but we’re not paying attention to it. When we pay attention

to it by focusing on the active outbreath, the body responds with relaxation, energy, and healing.” Her book offers a road map for listening to, working with and supporting our body minds and spirits – the key to well-being.

Resources

OutBreath Institute: www.outbreathinstitute.com

The book, Just Breathe Out—Using Your Breath to Create a New, Healthier You, is available in print, e-book, and iTunes Audible formats at www.justbreatheout.com.

For a one-hour Thomason interview with Ronald Hoffman, MD, go to:

The Science of Breath, Part 1

The Science of Breath, Part 2

Adventures for Women, a non-profit organization, is one of the few “women only” outdoor clubs in the US. http://www.adventuresforwomen.org/

Elaine Zablocki is the former editor of CHRF News Files.