Yoga and Sleep Apnea

Yoga provides an alternative way to treat sleep apnea by teaching better breathing habits. Here is what you need to know before choosing yoga over (or in addition to) traditional treatments.

Think about your breathing right now. Most likely, as soon as you think about it, you'll make yourself breathe more slowly and deeply, but how were you breathing before you thought about it? A lot of people will find that they tend to breathe quickly and shallowly throughout the day, often in response to intense concentration, stress, and other emotional responses.

Unfortunately, not breathing deeply enough -- for whatever reason -- essentially starves your brain for oxygen. You've probably noticed that as soon as you yawn or breathe deeply again, your head clears and you feel instantly better. That's because your brain is getting enough oxygen again.

Long term oxygen deprivation is not good for our brains or our bodies. Studies have connected all kinds of medical conditions with too shallow breathing: fatigue, anxiety, chest pain, heart palpitations, and even sleep disorders. That's right -- breathing too shallowly throughout the day could actually be causing your sleep apnea!

This is wear yoga comes into play. One of the fundamental things you learn in yoga is how to control your breathing, how to breathe slowly, deeply, and steadily. Advocates of yoga claim that learning better breathing skills can improve your overall physical health and immune system, give you increased energy, and even lead to longer, more fulfilling life.

For instance, for people with sleep apnea, yoga can be performed first thing in the mornings to increase the flow of oxygen to the brain and the rest of the body. In addition, practicing deep breathing throughout the day can counteract the effects of sleep apnea on day-to-day life by helping to keep your energy up.

Yoga encourages you to develop greater awareness of your body and your breathing, but not just as something that you do in your yoga class once a week. The idea is that over time and with practice, you will increase your awareness of your breathing, until you are able to maintain deeper, slower breathing as a matter of course. In a way, you are reteaching your body how to breathe, unlearning all the bad habits that you have picked up over the years as a result of stress and other factors.

Now, we're not suggesting that yoga can always take the place of traditional medicine. Depending on the severity of your sleep apnea, you probably won't be able to give up your CPAP machine altogether -- improving your breathing skills during the day won't be able to overcome physical obstructions of the airway during the night. However, learning to regulate your breathing better during waking hours can increase your quality of life when used in conjunction with your doctor-prescribed CPAP supplies. If your sleep apnea is mild or stress induced, on the other hand, yoga may enable you to be less dependent on traditional treatment, perhaps to even eliminate it altogether.

Having read this entire post, how is your breathing now? Are you still taking deeper, slower breaths? Most likely your answer is yes, but only when you think about it. How do you teach your subconscious to continue that pattern, enabling you to continue healthy breathing patterns without having to think about it all the time? Yoga is the answer.