Breathing: A Gateway to ‘Flow State’ (Part 2 of 3) Fighting to Live
Effort vs. Stress: Why it matters that you know the difference.
Summary from Part 1: BrainBodyVoice™(BBV) and BrainBodyGlottis* (BBG) science, based on doctoral research at the intersection of Sports Science and Opera Singing, has supported development of new training tools to put you in control of your breathing and mindset by conscious control of your central nervous system. The interventions based on this pioneering science help to further optimize an individual to the extent of being able to activate a ‘flow state’ or ‘getting in the zone’, whether in sympathetic mode (fight or flight) or parasympathetic mode (rest and digest). (NOTE: *Glottis is the space between the position of the vocal cords that can be optimized even without making sound.)
With BBV/BBG based interventions, because we can specifically target breathing via the nervous system, aside from improving lung performance, we can also in parallel improve postural integrity, joint performance, balance, coordination, core strength, and mental focus. This approach targeting the central nervous system (i.e. part of the bigger proprioceptive system) gets you to faster results due to a reduced trial-and-error process. The correct ‘feeling’ is affirmed by monitoring in real-time, something as simple as your heart rate and posture!
Fighting to Live
Although I have had the opportunity to work with elite athletes, performing artists and active U.S. military to help them optimize peak performance under pressure, I have rarely made public, the work I do with people at the other end of the spectrum. It is on a case by case basis, due to the need for involvement by related medical professionals in each setting that I would get necessary permissions to collaborate with. In those cases, I had the opportunity to help individuals optimize the most basic of life skills that take what seems to them, an Olympic effort, due to their diagnosed condition, serious illness, physical pain, or if they are in rehabilitation hospitals or at home with palliative care.
My first most serious case was in 2015 when I coached my Dad, Dr. Umesh Khare, a medical doctor of 55 years, who was fighting for his life against liver cancer. It was a heartbreaking circumstance for me, however my father, knowing about my work, invited me when in the hospital to share my BBV/BBG exercises as he was recovering from massive abdominal surgery. He had eventually learned to self-facilitate, optimize and imprint the BBV/BBG sequence that then helped to give him a way to build as much core strength as possible, before he knew the cancer would eventually rob him of it. It was over five months and the last days of his life, where the smallest actions became the greatest feats that took an Olympic effort; from walking and standing, to sitting, swallowing large pills, and then just talking, to making small gestures and finally, breathing. Watching my father commit to what I gave him, helped me to realize something important when individuals are at end of life. Having a training tool that helps someone when they are weak, to get stronger, gives hope for a better recovery. However, it also helps when they are dealing with a finite timeline, giving them hope for when they become weak again, to know they’ll have a way to access the slightest bit of strength for more dignity in their final days.
It was two years later I had another case, where a nationally recognized virologist, academic and mentor to me (i.e. during my doctoral dissertation and 10 years following), was at a rehabilitation hospital due to serious illness. A collaboration evolved with my mentor at the center, allowing me to give his speech/swallowing therapist and physical therapist ways to monitor how he activated certain cues that affirmed his BBV/BBG connection was strong. Once imprinted in his nervous system, it allowed him to keep improving on both his swallowing, standing and walking, and then when bed-ridden continue activating some leg strength, and eventually in ICU for breathing and to calm him.
My mother was my next serious case where the KHARE SYSTEMS™ flagged how she was at risk with a heart related matter. She ended up getting it resolved by medical professionals in time before any life-threatening experiences. I’m happy to report she is alive and well today, continuing to monitor her health and consistently building strength, breath power and mental focus!
All those experiences working with the closest people to me in life and death circumstances, highlighted my responsibility to continue to pursue specific research, discussion and collaboration with medical doctors and scientists in the fields including but not limited to GI (Gastroenterology), Cardiology, Otolaryngology, and Neuroscience. Other conditions where BBV/BBG science has helped to improve symptoms, include but are not limited to vocal paresis/paralysis, vocal cord damage, pain due to spinal cord issues, dystonia, Parkinson’s Disease, autism, ADHD and anxiety.
read next: Final Part 3 COVID19…
read previous: Part 1 Introduction…
