Deep Breathing: How to Access Its Many Benefits for Your Health and Wellness
INTRODUCTION
“Calm down, take a deep breath.” “BREATHE.” We often give or receive this advice when we or someone else is stressed, irritated or angry.
Yes, I’ve both said that to others and heard it from others. I’ve experienced a calming with this simple advice. Perhaps you have also.
Some people reject the idea because it seems too simple. But there’s more. Deep breathing techniques are an important tool that can help you to immediately alleviate stress, anxiety, frustration, and anger.
A few breaths in the midst of a stressful situation are but a tiny piece of the most effective use of deep breathing for our well-being. It can have broad effects if we use it more than as an immediate pause to get a grip. Many times we are dealing with ongoing stressful situations that are present every day. The stress doesn’t just pop up in a certain encounter or situation — it permeates our lives.
That kind of ongoing stress is the cause of many physical and emotional ailments; so when we learn to manage our stress we are improving our overall health and wellness.
This report has two sections:
1) The expansive benefits to our health and the physiological explanations for that. This bit of science helps us understand what’s going on.
2) Ways to practice deep breathing regularly to access those benefits.
HOW DEEP BREATHING BENEFITS US AND THE PHYSIOLOGY BEHIND IT
Deep breathing exercises can effectively activate your natural relaxation response and change the way your body responds to stress. Deep breathing allows the following body functions to happen:
· Increase the level of NO (nitric oxide) in your cells. This helps dilate blood vessels
· Lower your blood pressure
· Slow your breathing down with deep and meaningful breaths
· Lower your heart rate so you can feel calmer
· Slow down your metabolism so that it is more relaxed and efficient
Deep breathing exercises can be done anywhere and at any time. By doing deep breathing, you engage your brain so that you experience an increased sense of focus, profound calmness, and relaxation of the body.
Doing deep breathing exercises for 20–30 minutes per day will lower your overall levels of stress and anxiety. That time can be spread throughout the day, as described below. Deep breathing will bathe your brain in the vital oxygen your brain needs at all times. You can experience calmness, peacefulness, and a better sense of well-being.
Understanding the Physiology — Our Fight or Flight Response
What’s going on in our bodies when we are stressed and anxious? How does that change when we employ this practice? Having a basic understanding can increase our appreciation of the practice and motivate us to do it. Once I learned this, I began using the techniques more regularly and received the benefits.
The body has two systems within the nervous system: the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. Both of these systems contribute to the reasons why deep breathing exercises can calm us down.
Our biological systems have a natural ability to react during times of stress, especially in those situations where we’re facing a huge threat. Having this ability has been a matter of physical survival. In prehistoric times, humans came face-to-face with all sorts of wild animals, such as bears or tigers.
In response to such a threat, our body activates the Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response, or FFF reaction. Our threats today aren’t ordinarily of the lions and tigers and bears variety, but the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the physical sensations we get when we feel stress, anxiety, or severe anger and frustration.
These can include sweaty palms, increasing heart rate, and faster breathing. The activation of the FFF response is preparing our bodies to either run, fight the threat, or freeze.
Perceived Threats
The activation of the Fight Flight or Freeze Response can occur whenever we perceive that we’re up against a threat — whether we really are facing a threat or not.
Situations involving personal relationships, work responsibilities, work promotions, verbal arguments with others, and bad news about your health or the health of loved ones are just a few scenarios that can trigger the FFF response.
Despite the fact that all of these situations may be emotionally hurtful or painful, our body’s nervous system may interpret them as physically threatening. As such, our bodies activate the natural FFF response to get us ready to fight or run away.
Triggering the Opposite Reaction
In order to tell our biological systems that the situations we’re facing don’t require a fight or flight response, we must trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system produces the opposite response to the FFF, causing a relaxation response instead.
The Fight Flight or Freeze Response also diverts your blood flow. To prepare you to fight or to get ready to run from a perceived threat, blood is diverted away from the brain to the extremities in the body, such as the arms, legs, hands, and feet. No wonder when we are stressed or perceive a threat in some way, we aren’t able to think clearly!
Deep Breathing Reverses This Process
Breathing exercises send the blood supplies back from the extremities (since we’re not concerned with running or fighting) to the areas of the brain that allow us to think, reason, and problem solve.
This is why breathing exercises work to calm us when we experience acute stress, anger, or frustration. Blood is returning to the brain and it becomes easier for us to think, to see and implement reasonable responses to the causes of our stress.
HOW TO ACCESS THE POWER OF DEEP BREATHING
Let’s start with a simple approach to use in the heat of the moment when FFF has been activated. This goes a bit farther than just “take a deep breath” and offers more benefit.
1. Close your eyes.
2. Tense your whole body for four seconds while inhaling deeply.
3. Then exhale slowly.
4. Repeat these steps three or four times to get back to a state of relaxation and calm.
Here are 3 additional practices for you to incorporate into your day to combat ongoing stress in your life:
· Visualization with deep breathing. It only takes a few seconds to complete the exercise. You consciously relax the tenseness in your shoulders and neck, which is where many people tighten up during stress. Then take a deep breath and visualize the bottoms of your feet as having holes in them. Imagine that, through those holes, warm, comforting air is flowing up from the ground to fill up your entire body. The warmth is relaxing and you’ll feel less stress within seconds. Imagine your muscles soaking up the warmth and relaxation under the feeling. Do this several times a day when you feel the most stress.
· Breathe with a stuffed animal. This exercise takes a little bit longer but it can be extremely soothing. The purpose of the stuffed animal is to remind you to breathe through your abdomen. As you take those deep breaths, it will rise and fall with each breath. If it isn’t, you aren’t breathing deeply enough. Lie down on a couch or bed and put one hand on your chest. Place your stuffed animal in the middle of your abdomen. Keep your eyes closed and allow your body’s muscles to sequentially relax from the top of your head to the bottoms of your feet. Breathe in a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, and slowly breathe out. Try this for about twenty breaths and repeat throughout the day when you feel the most stressed out.
· Escape breathing. Escape into your mind by seeing yourself in a calm and serene place. Use all your senses to imagine yourself in this place. Breathe deeply and imagine yourself as calm as possible in this place. It may be a beach with the crashing waves of the ocean, the forest with its rustling leaves and the sounds of birds, or a meadow, where the wind is blowing serenely on your face as you breathe in deeply.
Fitting Deep Breathing into your Day
Try these tips:
· Do the deep breathing exercises while engaged in other daily activities: while stuck in traffic, waiting for an appointment, sitting on the train or bus. You can even do deep breathing while walking around.
· Set one or two deep breathing sessions per day, perhaps in the morning and just before going to bed. This will allow you to de-stress so that you can start your day stress-free and end your day stress-free.
· Practice mindfulness techniques. Mindfulness is when you use your brain just to notice the world around you without any type of judgment or criticism. This will increase your focus on the here and now so that you aren’t dwelling on past stressors.
The body’s natural ability to fight or flee from a perceived threat has been useful throughout the ages and is still useful today. Reversing the process through breathing exercises places you in a better position to think more clearly and handle the stress or issue that you’re facing in positive, proactive ways.
The more you get into a routine of practicing breathing exercises, the better you’ll become at doing so, which will give you the ability to reduce stress, anger, and frustration easier than before. I hope you will try it!
To explore the topic more, check out these books for adults and children about deep breathing for health: Deep Breathing for Adults and Children
Sometimes a physical tool is helpful when implementing new practices. A variety of deep breathing stress relief necklaces are available which can help. By wearing the necklace, you have a reminder to use your deep breathing techniques regularly. By using the tool, you are learning to slow your exhale which is valuable. Check them out here to see if it’s something you can use. Deep Breathing Stress Relief Necklace
This report is available as a free downloadable PDF with no optin here: Deep Breathing — How to Access Its Many Benefits for Your Health and Wellness .pdf
I’m Carol Brusegar, author, photographer and curator of information. My focus is on gathering and writing on topics that enhance all our lives — regardless of our age. Topics include health and wellness, personal development, innovation and creativity, and a variety of helpful, practical tools and practices. I have a special interest in helping people over 50 years of age to create their 3rd Age — the next stage of their lives — to be the best it can be. Visit my Amazon Author Page to find my published books: https://amazon.com/author/carolbrusegar
