Performing at the Pace of Perfect
... because everyone needs to breathe a bit easier
What’s your vital capacity?
Don’t you love the sound of those words… vital capacity. They hint at greatness: your complete capability, your life’s potential, fullness of spirit and graciousness of heart.
Well, in respiratory physiology, it’s none of these things and all of these things. Vital capacity has to do with the maximum volume of air our lungs can take in and breathe out in a single breath.
Let’s take a brief look at how this works. (Vital Capacity is labeled to the right in red.)
But first let’s look at the basics:
Resting (or Tidal) Volume is the quantity of breath you breathe in and out under undemanding conditions. The tidal breath is rhythmic and performed at a rate and volume established automatically and without your conscious control. It’s the product of the opposing tugs from the linings of the lungs and the chest cavity. They slide past each other in the way a coverslip slides along a slide. Hard to pull apart, but easy to slide.
Inspiratory Reserve Volume is the additional lung volume available when you take in a deep breath. It is accomplished by muscles in your rib cage which flair the ribs up and outward and your muscular diaphragm which contracts to flatten downward. Air moves in to fill the increase in space; entering more slowly as lung elasticity approaches its limit.
Expiratory Reserve Volume is the extra volume of air released as you intentionally blow out “all the air in your lungs.” (You don’t actually blow it ALL out, thank goodness, or they would collapse. Some air remains to keep the lungs inflated.) The diaphragm relaxes upward and the rib cage recoils and contracts, compressing the lungs to expel their air.
Vital Capacity then, is the sum of the total volume of air breathed in on full inspiration + the tidal volume + the volume breathed out on full expiration. It’s how much air a maximal breathing effort gets you.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could always function at full capacity?
Well, actually no. The energy expenditure of continuous deep breathing would exhaust us in short order. If you have ever climbed up a mountain and/or performed sustained effort at altitude, you’ll be familiar with this.
But in life’s version of a mountain climb, sometimes we are asked to “give all we’ve got” to meet deadlines or sprint to finish lines. This is when we call in our reserves — in short bursts of effort, taking time afterward to recover. But we’ll find ourselves heaving heavily in order to restore our internal oxygen (and energy) arrangement to its resting state and be ready for the next challenge.
Unless we don’t take time to recover.
Maybe, impassioned by the cause, we’re driven to succeed and dead set to overcome the odds, or simply spun up in the frenzy to keep diving into the fray — headfirst, holding nothing back, fighting our way through. Thing is, we can’t keep this up. We’re not meant to. We’re not made that way.
Rather, we’re made to run on an even keel — steady, rhythmic, reliable — with built-in reserves just for special occasions.
I’m letting that lesson sink in this week. Yes, there are big things going on all around that demand our attention and effort. “Me!” Me!” they shout, raising their hands and not uncommonly shaking an angry fist.
But I’m not having it. Instead, I’m choosing to calm my breath and attend to my Tidal Volume. In-out, in-out, on we go. The things I’m meant to do I can do at the pace of a calm and easy breath. I’m asking…
Who needs a hand?
What needs tending?
Which needs to be done first?
What am I best suited to do?
Am I listening?
Whose voice am I listening to?
How does what I’m doing make me feel?
History books highlight heroes and social media celebrates urgency, but sustained progress in the forward direction is accomplished by the rest of us, which is the most of us, toiling here in the trenches. Breathing in and out, in and out, as we go about doing what we’re good at. What we’re meant for. By design.
Steady on… at tidal volume. The reserve is there if we need it, thank God, but our life’s capacity really is accomplished in the everyday works we accumulate over a lifetime.
In-out, in-out, naturally, calmly, together.