Breathing as a Stress Relief
“Breath is life and only when you breathe you know you live”
How often do you find yourself in a situation that you need to concentrate and your natural body response is to hold your breath? Well if you think about it you will notice we do it more often than we realise.
Breath is essential for us to function. From the moment you were born during your lifetime you will take about 672 million breaths - well that’s a lot of breathing right? What you may not realise is that the mind, body, and breath are intimately connected and can influence each other. Essentially, your breathing is influenced by your thoughts, and your thoughts and body can be influenced by your breath. Many of us would think I know how to breath I have done it all of my life, however learning to breathing correctly is a valuable tool in helping to restore balance in the mind and body—especially in stressful moments.
When you are stressed out your nervous system triggers the body’s response fight or flight giving you a burst of energy. Your breathing becomes shallow and rapid, you primarily breathing comes from the chest and not the lower lungs. This can make you feel shortness of breath, which is a common when you feel anxious or frustrated. At the same time your body will produce a surge of hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), which will increase your blood pressure and pulse rate and put you in a revved-up state of high alert. Taking deep breaths can reverse these symptoms instantly.
In addition to the breathing, you engage the abdominal muscles and diaphragm instead of the muscles in the upper chest and neck. This conditioning of the respiratory muscles results in improved efficiency of oxygen exchange with every breath by allowing more air exchange to occur in the lower lungs. It also reduces strain on the muscles of the neck and upper chest, allowing these muscles to relax.
Deep breathing can help calm and slow down the emotional turbulence in the mind. Breathing can have an immediate effect on diffusing emotional energy so there is less reactivity to your emotions.
Ready to take control of your breathing and wellbeing? Don’t forget to breathe!
