The sigh: our daily super-breath
Everyone has a sense of a sigh. In fact, we sigh roughly every 5 minutes. That’s a dozen times per hour. Yes! We really do!
Typically, we think of a sigh as a noisy extended inhalation followed by an even more noisy extended exhalation, finished with a short pause in the breath. When was a time you felt relief, boredom, or resignation? What about happiness? Chances are, there was sighing involved. Sighing is often an automatic response to emotion or extreme stress.
However, we don’t only sigh as a reaction to something, we also sigh automatically.
Try it yourself – sit quietly and comfortably. Become aware of your breathing. You will find that your body will automatically take a long inhalation and a long exhalation every 5 minutes or so. It just happens. This “super breath” has between 2 and 5 times the volume of a normal breath!
Photo Credit: HONE HEALTH
Why is this?
Simply put, a larger, longer breath keeps our lungs healthy. Our bodies do this automatically to help protect our lungs.
The lung is made up of 500 million or so tiny alveoli. These fluid lined or fluid-filled sacks are the smallest branches of the lungs responsible for taking oxygen in to the body (inhalation) and taking carbon dioxide out (exhalation). To be at their most efficient, the alveoli need to stay open… Enter the sigh! These automatic bigger extended breaths are the body’s way of ensuring the alveoli stay open thereby allowing an efficient exchange of oxygen or carbon dioxide. Sighs are essential to our physiological survival and general lung health.
Photo Credit: Blue Door Media
But is there more to this ‘super breath’ than just lung efficiency? What about the change in feeling when we let out a sigh?
When we feel a deep sense of relief, we sigh. By extending the breath we feel more relaxed than we did before. Sighing is also a social signal to others that all is okay and that they can feel okay too. We sigh, we let go, we relax. Therefore we can conclude that sighs have an important role in the central nervous system activating the vagus nerve, signalling that all is okay.
Which leaves us with a slight puzzle: which comes first – the sense of relief or the sigh? Something to ponder on until next time.
