The key to good health: 3 breathing techniques to help you reconnect to inner peace
Breathing properly is vital to your wellbeing – physical, mental and emotional.
When daily events cause you stress, your breathing shallows and this can make feelings of stress worse. The good news is that you have control over getting yourself back to a state of calm simply by paying attention to your breath.
Firstly, let’s take a brief look at the biology of breathing.
The benefits of good breathing
Become aware of your breathing has a significant impact on your health and wellbeing and has the following benefits:
- Alleviates stress and anxiety
- Boosts feelings of wellbeing
- Reduces heart rate and blood pressure
- Lowers levels of stress hormone in the blood
- Increases energy levels.
Here are some tried and tested breathing techniques to start practising with.
What is the purpose of breathing?
The purpose of breathing is to transport life-giving oxygen to the cells throughout your body. When you breathe, your lungs take in oxygen from the air, transport it to the circulatory system which then distributes this to the cells throughout your body. At the same time, carbon dioxide, which is a waste gas, is transported from your blood to your lungs and expelled from your body when you exhale. This is called gas exchange, and it is vital to sustaining life and maintaining good health.
The main muscles that control the movement of breathing is the diaphragm, the intercostal muscles (the muscles between your ribs) and the abdominal muscles. If you feel stressed, these muscles contract and cause the breathing to become shallow which can make feelings of stress or anxiety even worse.
Even though the stress response can be involuntary, you can get back in control of this response through your breathing. By being mindful of your breathing, you can ease and alleviate symptoms of stress and anxiety.
Try these 3 breathing techniques.
Three-part breathing exercise
This three-part breathing exercise is simple and a good way to begin breathing exercises. It is essentially about practicing mindfulness around breathing, using all three breathing parts of the body properly – the diaphragm, chest and abdomen.
- Inhale with a long and deep breath in, using your chest, diaphragm and abdomen.
- Exhale fully while focussed on the breath, and become aware of any sensations in your body.
This is basically a first step to becoming more aware of your breathing if you’re new to breathing techniques.
4-7-8 breathing technique
This technique will help you to relax and get back to sleep if you wake up in the middle of the night.
- Exhale completely.
- Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4.
- Hold the breath for a count of 7.
- Breathe out for a count of 8.
- Repeat 4 times. As you get better you can do more repetitions.
You’ll feel yourself relaxing as this breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system which places your body in a more resting mode.
Diaphragmatic breathing
This breathing technique increases the use of your diaphragm and therefore the lungs to their full capacity, which in turn increases lung efficiency.\
You can practise this breathing lying down or sitting in a chair.
- Place one hand on the chest and one hand on your abdomen, so that you can feel the rise and fall of each breath.
- Close the mouth and slowly inhale through the nose, while feeling the abdomen inflate.
- Hold your breath for two seconds
- Exhale slowly through your mouth fir about 6 seconds, the exhale must be longer than the inhale. Keep your hand on your abdomen, and a hand on your chest, the hand on your chest should be still while the other hand feels the abdomen rise and fall.
Repeat these steps for 5 minutes. Keep the hands on the chest and abdomen so that you get accustomed to the feeling of the chest being still, while the abdomen inflates and deflates.
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