Test your threshold

By now it is widely accepted that vital lung capacity is a reliable predictor of one’s cardiovascular health and even mortality (read more about it >). The ability of your lungs to maintain their capacity depends on two key factors: lung compliance (ability to stretch out) and lung elasticity (ability to recoil). Unfortunately, the natural aging process is not kind to our lungs: it is expected that the lungs will lose 12% of capacity between the age of 30 and 50 and continue a steady decline from there. By age 80 we would usually lose about 30% of our lung capacity.

However, this is not inevitable. There are specific things we can do in our yoga practice to maintain our vital lung capacity. To keep proper balance of compliancy and elasticity of the lungs, we need to exercise both. We support lung compliance by breathing in fully, expanding the ribcage and holding the air in. We support lung elasticity by exhaling fully and holding the air out.

In yoga we work on maintaining and expanding lung compliancy and elasticity in several ways. The main one involves increasing breath threshold – consistently working on deepening our inhalation and lengthening our exhalation both on our asana and pranayama practice. So this week let’s test our breath threshold to see what we are working with.

HOW TO:

Sit in a comfortable position. Breathe comfortably and count how many seconds it takes you to inhale and to exhale. Then, every second breath, increase the length of your inhale and exhale by one or two seconds. Continue to do that until you reach the maximum comfortable length of inhale and exhale. You need to be able to sustain that length for 8-12 breaths. Afterwards, gradually shorten your inhale and exhale back to the starting point.

For example, you might start with your inhale and exhale at 6 seconds each. Over 10 breaths you might lengthen it to 10-second inhalation and 12-second exhalation. If you are able to maintain that length for 12 breaths, this will be your current breath threshold (IN: 10 sec, EX: 12 sec). This will be your jump-off point for other breath exploration practices.