As nurses in clinical practice, we feel a tremendous responsibility to our preoperative and postoperative patients—not only to provide to them direct care, but also to encourage their active participation in the healing process.

Preoperative patients often come to us with elevated anxiety levels, in addition to the clinical presentations that require surgical intervention. Their anxieties may stem from fear of pain, immobility, loss of function and lifestyle, or simply the unknown.

We instruct our postoperative patients to take their medications, manage their wound care, nourish their bodies for optimal growth and development, and restore muscular/skeletal functioning through specific physical movements.

By applying the principles of Zen Yoga both preoperatively and postoperatively, we can provide our patients with another tool to help facilitate the best possible surgical outcome and speed healing.

What is Zen Yoga?

Zen Yoga is a holistic blend of traditional Eastern health and fitness methods that integrate body, mind, and spirit. Proper breathing is the basic principle of Zen Yoga. By balancing effective breathing, movement, and deep relaxation, Zen Yoga assists the human body in reaching homeostasis—equilibrium.

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being—not merely as the absence of disease or infirmity. In Zen Yoga, each breath flows into the next, each movement flows into the next. Each progression of healing is the foundation for further growth and healing. By teaching our patients the basics of Zen Yoga, we can help them return to their natural state of health.

The breath of life

Breathing is both fundamental and automatic. Our autonomic nervous system ensures that respirations arise approximately 10 to 14 times per minute.

"Subsistence" breathing uses approximately one-third of lung capacity. It sustains the human body, but it is inadequate during times of stress and cannot prevent postoperative complications such as pneumonia. But deep abdominal breathing delivers air into the bronchi to the level of the alveoli, where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide occurs.

According to Aaron Hoopes, founder of Zen Yoga and author of Zen Yoga, a Path to Enlightenment through Breathing, Movement, and Meditation (2007: Kodansha International), Indian yogis and Chinese tai chi masters teach that inhalation and exhalation through the nostrils allows one to concentrate the energy within the body and use it to keep the body warm and vibrant. Chi, pronounced "chee," or life force, gains entry into our bodies via deep breathing.

However, most people breathe inefficiently, limiting the available oxygen that is so crucial for a healthy existence. Stress and illness further restrict breathing when anxiety, pain, fear, muscle tension, and resistance cause the breath to become choppy, shallow, and weak. As the quality of the breath decreases, the demand for oxygen increases. Decreases in tissue oxygenation impair healing.

By instructing our patients to breathe consciously and deeply through the nose, we are teaching them to make the body-mind connection and actively participate in their own healing through the generation of more chi energy.

Deep breathing calms and energizes

Slow inhalation and exhalation combined with mental awareness of breathing brings body and mind into harmony. Breathing deeply into the abdomen directly affects the parasympathetic nervous system, restoring emotional stability and improving the delivery of nutrients to the cells.

Abdominal breathing also strengthens the muscle of the abdominal wall and chest cavity and increases the lungs' elasticity and overall capacity. Deep, full breaths can play a prominent role in decreasing the patient's need for ventilation assistance during the immediate postoperative period.

Teaching a patient to place his or her hands on the abdomen and observe its rise and fall can provide a focal point for breath awareness. Breath is the intersection between body and mind. If the mind is agitated, the body will be tense. If the body relaxes, the mind will calm.