“I remember a woman we met in Georgia, in the United States, my partner Sandra and I. She had this irritable bowel syndrome kind of problem with major anxiety around it, so she wanted some advice. There wasn’t much I could offer her, but one of them was a paper bag.
About four months later she wrote back and said her whole life had completely changed. She no longer had to suffer with these episodes.
She hadn't had any for months, and she couldn't believe it. But of course, she was dependent on the 2 2 2 2 bag. She wasn't learning a new habit. She just grabbed the bag when she needed it, unfortunately.”
Negative Practice
Another simple technique, which is part of the core of Litchfield’s program, is something called “negative practice.”
Litchfield explains:
“What you do is you become an expert at performing the bad habit. So you're not a victim of the bad habit. You own it. You take ownership of it because you can do it whenever you want to. And if you can do it whenever you want to, you can disengage it.
So you learn to do it, disengage it, do it, disengage it. And there are specic ways of doing this. We use biofeedback in this whole process. That's an important part of it. So, then you're not afraid anymore of the symptoms because you can turn them on, you can turn them off, you don't really care. It's not a big deal.
In that process, you get highly reinforced. Again, that's how physiology works. The outcome of what it does determines what it can do within the potential it has. The idea is that there's a positive outcome for restoring good respiration.
On the other hand, it can be much more challenging because if someone is overbreathing to get angry at their husband, that’s a more complex issue. You have to address that. So it can be very simple or it can be quite complex, but nevertheless, it works wonders for people.”
To learn more, visit:
Better Physiology Ltd. at betterphysiology.com for information about and purchase of CapnoTrainer instrumentation for personal and professional applications
RespiMatters at www.CapnoLearning.org for information regarding online breathing behavior analysis services available worldwide
Professional School of Behavioral Health Sciences at www.bp.edu and www.e-campus. bp.edu for information regarding professional training in breathing behavior analysis
Breathing Science Inc., a nonprofit publisher, at www.theBSJ.org, where you can purchase the book “CapnoLearning: An Introductory Guide”
Sources and References :
1 Researchgate.net August 2022