By Nadia Lerner  The Stamford Advocate
October 13, 2005

Suffering from headaches, upset stomachs, insomnia? No guarantee, but change the way you breathe, and it might spell "relief." Your symptoms may be caused by stress, says Bernadette Johnson, director of the Integrative Medicine Program at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut. Johnson teaches a relaxation program for those facing surgery or medical treatment. Among its prime components is proper breathing, a must to release tension.

"If you make a quick change in the rate at which you breathe, you send a message to the brain, `I'm not threatened,' " says Johnson, explaining that our reaction to stress goes back to the caveman's "fight or flight response." Challenged by a saber-toothed tiger, the caveman either ran or fought for his life. Nowadays, our threat from saber-tooths is down to zero, but we react the same way when menaced: The mind tells the body to protect itself, generating a faster heart rate, breathing and blood flow. Result: Anxiety, depression, heart palpitations and a host of other symptoms.

People can break the stress cycle in four easy steps, says Johnson. First, stop what you're doing. Second, breathe using your stomach (belly breathing) with a few deep breaths, allowing the stomach to expand with air. Do not breathe using the chest, which most of us do normally. Johnson instructs students to count from 1 to 4 while inhaling, then to count down from 4 to 1. (Although students can choose the method most comfortable for them, she recommends inhaling through the nose and exhaling from the mouth.) Third, think about the cause of your stress, deliberating its importance in the scheme of things. For example, a computer crashes and you get angry. Clearly, seething won't change or resolve the situation. Instead, go to Step 4 and rectify the problem with a viable solution.

Says Johnson, "When your body is relaxed, your mind will follow." Many patients tell her the four-step approach has turned their life around. "They sleep better, have less relationship problems and irritability with co-workers." Breathing is also an important element in mind and body regimens including yoga, meditation and Pilates. Janaki Pierson, yoga and meditation instructor at Greenwich Hospital's Integrative Medicine Program and founding director of the Woodbury Yoga Center, instructs students on the importance of belly breathing. She calls this form of breathing "the key to radiant health and inner peace." Infants, cats and dogs belly breathe automatically, says Pierson. However, by the time a child reaches 8 or 10, they're usually chest breathers because of the fight or flight response that depends on chest breathing for quick, short bursts of oxygen. Eventually, the body gets used to shallow breathing.

"Now you have a body that perceives itself to be in stress all the time because you are breathing with your chest all the time," Pierson explains. This activates the body's stress response system unnecessarily, emitting stress-related hormones. A surprise heart attack might be caused by people overstressing their system over a lifetime.

Says Pierson: "When you breathe slowly, smoothly and evenly, your mind cannot generate enough thoughts to support the upset, whether it's anger, frustration, fear or anxiety." Elaine Petrone recalls how open-mouthed breathing helped her recover from a serious leg injury exacerbated by a viral-like illness. "I had a lot of pain, a lot of TMJ, a lot of jaw issues," says Petrone. She subsequently developed the Elaine Petrone Method of Ball Therapy, based on the study of various grass-roots' therapies.

Petrone teaches this relaxation technique in the Health and Fitness Institute at Stamford's Tully Health Center. The program combines breathing with the use of rubber balls under various body parts to lessen excess muscle tension.

People tend to hold their breath, which tightens their muscles, Petrone says. In her program, students exhale loudly on the sounds of "s" or "h," to help tone their diaphragm.

"The diaphragm is a muscle," she says. "I focus so much on exhalation because it allows natural breathing to happen after that. Once people get that awareness, it starts turning the cycle."

Rita Trieger, editor of Fit Yoga and Fit magazines, teaches meditation and yoga at Tully. In meditation, especially for beginners, the breath is really the focus because it starts to quiet the mind, she says. "Letting go of thought is the hardest thing. Meditation is to calm things down and get you to a point where you can push all that crazy, frantic thought process, stream of consciousness aside."

Other breathing techniques include alternate nostril breathing -- closing one nostril at a time and breathing out the other. "That can have a really energizing effect comparable to a snack or nap," she says.

Pauline Cariolo instructs corporate staffers in Pilates at Greenwich Hospital's Healthy Living Center. Unlike the meditative poses of yoga, she explains that Pilates centers on flowing movement. In conjunction with body motion, one deep-breathes by squeezing, tightening and releasing the abdominal muscles. It is similar to the belly breathing of yoga.

"If you're not breathing properly, your form is probably going to be off," says Cariolo. "You can have changes in the lower back and spine that would not be conducive to a neutral spine -- which is the key to good alignment