I sigh a lot. It’s not because I’m sad or annoyed, but because I don’t breathe properly. If I’m concentrating on something, I forget to breathe. No bad thing.
Robert Scoble highlights Linda Stone’s work.
She noticed that most people stop breathing when doing email. She explained to me today that that behavior is fascinating her and that she’s theorizing that it causes stress, among other things.
She suggested a few things to try.
1. Change your posture. She said that people who compute while standing up breath more often.
2. Get exercise. She said that those who exercise seem to breath better in stressful situations.
3. Be aware and check in with yourself to see if you’re breathing normally. She said there are some devices coming soon where you can play a game with yourself to keep your breathing up to a normal rate.She is now writing for the Huffington Post and in her post about email apnea rambled out a bunch of bad things that can happen to you due to not breathing well.
Okay. Seems it is bad. Oops.
I’m not sure I agree that it’s a stress response. Seems to me more likely to be a focus response. Of course, that takes some of the “auto” out of autonomic. We control our breathing of course, though when we lose consciousness there’s a system that takes over. I’m wondering that with some sort of self-training, a pavlovian response to a metronome maybe, we might be able to beat this. Are there seats which offer better posture for this? Does music play a part? Does the ‘business casual’ dress make a difference? Is my belt too tight? Collar too stiff?
It’s true though, even though I was trying, I held my breath for most of this blog post.
MJ, it’s a very normal response in anticipation or surprise to inhale, and hold our breath. This is generally followed by a good exhale, unless we’re in a sort of mental or physical fight or flight, in which case, we tend to inhale, hold our breath, breathe shallowly. Breath holding is GOOD, when it’s helpful for our bodies to be in “fight or flight” and resourced accordingly. Breath holding is not so beneficial, when we’re not going to be burning off the fight or flight resources (liver dumps glucose and cholesterol, energy to our limbs, slow to no digestive enzymes, etc.). And, absolutely, posture plays a role — standing posture more often supports healthy breathing, than a more slouched, arms forward keyboarding posture. There are MANY things we can do — be conscious about our breathing — notice when we’re holding our breath or breathing shallowly and shift that, study a breathing technique (Buteyko, Andy Weil’s breathing, pranayama, martial arts breathing, etc.), exercise more to “burn off” the resources and enjoy the parasympathetic response that follows exercise. There is a body of research around breath holding and the increased incidence of stress-related diseases — I’ve mentioned a few of the researchers. When I noticed I was holding my breath doing email, I began a months long research review, interviewed researchers, physicians, cardiologists, neurologists and had the post fact-checked by several of these folks. There are a few folks playing with small device design and games that can make it “fun” to remember to breathe….
Hi Linda,
Thanks for the observations. My other half refuses to believe that she holds her breath and claims it’s a “geek thing”. Hmmm.
I just wonder if there’s a way round it using the computers we sit with every day.