Guy Donahaye, author of the book “Inheritance” by Senior A Tang -5-day workshop.
The breathing ability of our lungs is crucial to our health and also determines the intensity and rhythm of our yoga postures. When evaluating lung function, we usually look not at lung capacity, but at lung capacity. Lung capacity refers to the amount of air that can be exhaled after maximum inhalation and maximum exhalation. It reflects the potential ability of respiratory function to a certain extent. Its normal average is about 3500 milliliters, but this is related to human body size, age, gender, and physical activity levels. Generally speaking, the better the health of a person, the greater their lung capacity, and vice versa. Our yoga practice can help expand and maintain our lung capacity, and swimming, the most prominent exercise, can also help with lung capacity. However, even with yoga and exercise, it is inevitable that a person will experience a decline in lung capacity as they age..
As people grow up, lung function initially increases and then reaches its peak in youth: for example, women reach their peak at the age of 20, men reach their peak at the age of 25, and then it will remain in a relatively stable state; But lung function gradually decreases with age after the age of 35. More specifically, as we age, the total capacity of our lungs can actually remain relatively stable, and may even slightly increase; But our residual volume (i.e. the amount of air remaining in the lungs) significantly increases after full exhalation, which reduces our lung capacity, which gradually decreases after the age of 35..
This is caused by degenerative changes in the body, especially when people reach the age of 50 and above, due to changes in skeletal structure – the chest tends to permanently rise, the ribs become more horizontal, and the sternal cartilage becomes harder. Our bodies are more trapped in a fixed position closer to the “inhalation”, unable to lower our ribs as we did before when exhaling. In addition, as age increases, the natural elasticity of various body tissues decreases, and the diaphragm also becomes less elastic, more passively participating in the contraction of chest volume during exhalation..
As one ages, the ability to exhale becomes increasingly important.
When these organizations become harder or lack elasticity, exhalation is neither as natural nor as smooth as before; At this point, more effort is needed to fully exhale the air from the lungs. Of course, in order to overcome stiffness, it is also necessary to inhale more actively. But because the elasticity of the lungs decreases, it makes it easier for them to inflate during inhalation, but the difficulty of exhaling increases due to the decrease in rebound force. As the permanent chest height increases, exhalation requires more effort; We must also rely more on the elasticity of the diaphragm rather than the ribs to exhale. Unfortunately, as we age, our diaphragm also tends to weaken. These factors all lead to a decrease in lung capacity as age increases. If we pay more attention to breathing when we are young, for example, we start practicing yoga postures that emphasize breathing early on, especially Pranayama breathing practice. The above described changes in body structure with age can slow down the decline in lung capacity and breathing ability; But no matter what, these are all natural laws, humans.