It’s Not Rude To Sigh

It’s Not Rude To Sigh – It Could Save Your Life!

As a kid, I was always scolded by the adults around me for sighing. So I did it more to piss them off.

It’s clear to me now that my ASD defiance traits, but back then, it was one of the few ways I could express myself when I couldn’t find words when I felt frustrated or angry. Struggling to express myself when feeling heightened was a common thing — it often is for neurodiverse kids.

Through a bit of research and review of my clinical notes, I’ve come to understand that sighing is beneficial for several reasons.

Benefit One — An unconscious sigh is a life-sustaining reflex that helps preserve lung function.

A sigh is a deep breath, but not a voluntary deep breath. Think about this — the sigh starts as a normal breath, but before you exhale, you take a second breath on top of it.

The involuntary sigh boosts the lungs’ ability to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. In turn, this boosts the function of the alveoli, the air sacs where the gas exchange occurs. The only way to pop them open again is to sigh, which brings in twice the volume of a normal breath.

Therefore, sighing is brilliant if you are a notorious shallow breather, like someone who is anxious or experiencing lung dysfunction.

Benefit Two — Regulation of body function

We breathe in air, a mixture of gases, to promote oxygen exchange into the body. The rhythm and frequency of your breathing are modulated by more than one part of the brain.

When our blood gas chemistry is balanced, then our organ systems, such as filtration within the kidneys, and blood pressure and heart rate respond accordingly. When there is balance in our chemistry, our nervous system receives the ‘balance’ signal that all is well in our world.

For example

• The forebrain (cortex, hypothalamus, and amygdala) regulates our breathing during exercise
• afferent pathways of regions within the forebrain, regulate the ancillary muscles of the diaphragm, tongue, larynx, pharynx, chest, glotis, and postural support muscles to allow breathing mechanisms to synchronise and function normally , for example, talking whilst walking
• The mid-brain regulates the exchange of gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide , and it’s worth noting there is a flow-on effect to blood pressure and the function of organs like the heart and kidneys. Additionally, the midbrain regulates any changes within breathing, to respond to fluctuations of internal and external temperatures, as well as sleep cycles.
• The brain stem regulates changes to breathing based on cognition and emotional responses.

I know boring brain stuff (which I love). Your breath is therefore influenced and overridden when your sympathetic nervous system is activated- when you’re in a state of fight-or-flight.

According to Mark Krasnow, a professor of biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, his findings shed light on a network of cells in the brain stem that generates the breathing rhythm. Krasnow states that along each side of the brain stem, two networks of 200 neurons control the sighing reflex.

“Unlike a pacemaker that regulates only how fast we breathe, the brain’s breathing centre also controls the type of breath we take,” Krasnow said. The sighing reflex is therefore comprised of small numbers of different kinds of neurons , each with their stimuli that activate different types of breathing. One area of neurons programs regular breaths, another sighs, and the others could be for yawns, sniffs, coughs, and maybe even laughs and cries.

“Sighing appears to be regulated by the fewest number of neurons we have seen linked to a fundamental human behaviour,” explained Jack Feldman, a professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Benefit Three — Possible Reduction of Anxiety

UCLA Neurobiologist, Jack Feldman states that “A sigh is a deep breath, but not a voluntary deep breath.” Feldman continues, “It starts out as a normal breath, but before you exhale, you take a second breath on top of it.”

On average, a person sighs every five minutes, which translates into 12 sighs per hour.

A person with conditions like panic disorder, anxiety, and hypervigilance is dominated by their over-active sympathetic nervous system. These types of conditions cause people to tend to shallowly breathe, and not deeply inflate the lungs or stretch the diaphragm. Therefore introduction of breath work can improve a client’s limited or reduced sighing reflex.

Therefore, consciously improving the capacity of your breathing could prove useful in healing your experience of anxiety disorders and other psychiatric conditions where sighing grows debilitating.

Benefit Four — Emotional Regulation

The mechanism behind the emotional roots of conscious sighing remains a mystery to Western medicine researchers. Feldman acknowledges, “There is certainly a component of sighing that relates to an emotional state. When you are stressed, for example, you sigh more.”

Within eastern modalities, we know that the sigh is a nonverbal form of release. Sighing is a process of letting go, releasing that which no longer resonates with your emotional state. The sigh is the physical method of venting some mental or emotional stress out of the body.

Kinesiology and meditation models both depict the deep sigh as the physical and mechanical mechanism that attempts to override the sympathetic nervous system dominance. When you add the sound of your voice to your sigh, you’re adding your own unique internal vibration, which acts as a medicinal frequency to the emotional component you are releasing into the air.

The Heart Math Institute and research undertaken by Dr Joe Dispenza clearly illustrate that a deep sigh, which is longer than the inward breath, downregulates the vagus nerve, downregulates the sympathetic fight-or-flight reaction, which in turn, has a consequential positive effect on the enteric nervous system.

In other words, the sigh has a deeply soothing effect on the nervous system. A sigh is surprisingly simple, and allows you to bypass your conscious brain altogether — a natural form of regulation for the emotional self.

Conclusion

It’s not rude to sigh; in fact, it’s essential to regulate yourself emotionally. You can calm your nervous system immediately with a sigh. Here’s the formula : Two inhales, followed by an extended exhale.

First published with WordGarden, a Medium Publication. Click here this piece.

If your IMPOSTER self is running your life and training like an Olympian, then maybe it’s time to show it some kindness?

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We are all deserving of unconditional love and kindness – just for being born. We also deserve to ackowledge our internal imposter doesn’t need to run our life!

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