For most of us it requires a sudden, dramatic and confrontational situation to produce this reaction. For asthmatics, maybe these panic episodes are coming out of past experiences. Modern science with its mechanistic view of the world and its creatures decided that breathing was purely and simply to provide oxygen to the blood through the lungs because this was the most obvious function subject to measurement. If we observe nature, we see that human babies along with other mammals are provided in the womb with an umbilical cord through which they are supplied with nutrients including oxygen. We have also discussed previously the first breath which we take after birth and which begins our independence from our mother.
Breathing is really our first experience of the outside world.
Again, if we observe nature there is no obvious rush to take this first breath. The umbilical cord continues to pulse and if left alone will sustain the baby for many minutes until breathing is established naturally and the placenta is expelled. The midwives of other cultures and of earlier times in the West were in no particular hurry to separate the baby from its support until it showed that it was ready. They waited until breathing was established and the cord stopped pulsing and then they cut the cord. I am suggesting here that the fear and the panic reaction to a premature and abrupt separation from our placental support, all in the context of our first experience of the world outside the womb is a major cause of over-breathing.