Written by: Olga Willemsen, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Have you already discovered the power of breathing practices for yourself? Intentional breathing practices can help you take control of your health and well-being relieving stress and anxiety. Discover how breathwork helps with relaxation and gives an overall boost to your mental state.
Understanding breathing will help you realize the high value of breathing exercises.
Why breathing is important
Your respiratory system consists of airways, lungs, and also blood vessels, and muscles involved in breathing.
Its obvious function is to enrich your blood with oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. Besides that, the airflow in the respiratory system allows you to talk and smell the world around you but also influences your physiological, mental, and emotional state.
At rest, you take 10 to 20 breaths per minute. Your lungs have a total volume of about 4 L to 6 L and an enormous surface area of about half of a tennis court. However, most of us have shallow breathing using a mere 10% of our total lung capacity.
By using breathing awareness and exercises, you can deepen your breathing and even increase your lung capacity.
How You Breathe
Your normal breathing is involuntary. It is regulated by your autonomic nervous system and is continuously adjusted to the level of your physical activity, emotional state, and the quality of the air around you.
Your breathing rate is tightly bound to the heart rate, blood pressure, and activity of your brain. Every time you breathe in your heart beats faster and when you breathe out your heart slows down.
Your inhalation is an active process. Your lungs expand when your muscles contract- ribs get lifted and the diaphragm moves down and flattens.
Whereas exhaling happens passively. Your lungs deflate because the muscles relax - the ribs fall together because of gravity and the diaphragm arches up again under the pressure of the abdomen viscera.
Breathwork
Your physiology, including breathing, is regulated by your involuntary nervous system, and all processes are consistently aligned. And it is only the breathing that you can influence directly but through that also your heart rate, blood pressure, and the state of your nervous system.
This explains why breathing techniques have already been used in yogic spiritual practices for centuries. And nowadays, the benefits of yogic and modern breathing techniques are backed up by science.
Essential elements of intentional breathing exercises are
deep and slow breathing
diaphragmatic and full lung capacity breathing
prolonged exhalation and
holding the breath after inhalation and exhalation
Also, it is important to use nasal breathing. It was shown that nasal breathing in contrast to oral breathing synchronizes activities of various brain areas and regulates behavior, thought, and emotion, as well as memory retrieval.
A recent study conducted by Stanford University showed that various breathing techniques including mindful observation of your breathing effectively reduce anxiety and improve moods. The most effective technique in this study was so-called physiological sighing.
Physiological Sighing Technique
Sighing is a natural breath that plays a critical role in flexibility and adaptation to your day-to-day activities.
Sigh is a reinforced double inhalation and single exhalation followed by a pause. Double inhaling allows you to fill up your lungs fuller.
You sigh frequently during the day when you change your physical or emotional state.
You sigh in relief when you sit down or lay down, when you are bored, when you calm down, and when transitioning into sleep. Such a sigh gives relief and reduces physiological tension.
But there are also sighs of arousal. Like, you may sigh while waking up and deepen your breathing before opening your eyes.
You can mimic natural sighing and use it as an effective breathing technique both for purpose of relief and arousal. For that, you would take a deep double breathing and without a break, continue breathing out.
You can maximize the effect of this exercise by breathing deeply into the abdomen(diaphragmatic breathing) and through the nose only.
Sighing is capable of shifting any state. So, you can calm down fast by sighing with prolonged exhalation. Or you can support a state of arousal, like your performance during any physical exercise by sighing in the rhythm of your movements.
And a regular daily practice of just five minutes a day will help you to elevate your moods and reduce anxiety. This effect becomes even stronger with time.
Benefits of Breathing Practices
Breathing practices can help you minimize stress and elevate your moods. Breathwork is effective in reducing anxiety and preventing panic attacks.
Because breathing techniques alleviate stress and anxiety, improve your moods, and increase your self-awareness, they can reduce emotional eating and cravings, increase the sense of satiety, and naturally help with weight management.
In addition, Intentional breathing exercises support the health of your heart and autonomic nervous system which can boost your longevity.
Conclusion
Intentional breathing directly influences your cardiovascular and nervous systems and positively affects both your psychological and physiological state.
In just 5 min a day, breathing practice will reduce stress and anxiety, improve your moods and resilience, and help with weight loss. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!
Olga Willemsen, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Olga Willemsen, Ph.D. is a hypnotherapist and transformational coach certified in Neo-Ericksonian Hypnosis, Rapid Transformational Therapy, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. She combines her knowledge and experience of hypnotherapy, neuroscience, psychotherapy, NLP, and CBT to create a unique practice, and she can help with anxiety, panic attacks, burnout, sleep disorders, and childhood trauma. Her number one priority is empowering clients to live up to their highest potential. Working online or in-person in The Hague ‒ in English, German, Russian, or Dutch.
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