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Breathe. Exhale. Repeat: The Benefits of Controlled Breathing
DIR By: LightMove
Date: December 3, 2021, 2:43 am
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Take a deep breath, expanding your belly. Pause. Exhale slowly
to the count of five. Repeat four times.
Congratulations. You’ve just calmed your nervous system.
Controlled breathing, like what you just practiced, has been
shown to reduce stress, increase alertness and boost your immune
system. For centuries yogis have used breath control, or
pranayama, to promote concentration and improve vitality. Buddha
advocated breath-meditation as a way to reach enlightenment.
Science is just beginning to provide evidence that the benefits
of this ancient practice are real. Studies have found, for
example, that breathing practices can help reduce symptoms
associated with anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress
disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder.
“Breathing is massively practical,” says Belisa Vranich, a
psychologist and author of the book “Breathe,” to be published
in December. “It’s meditation for people who can’t meditate.”
How controlled breathing may promote healing remains a source of
scientific study. One theory is that controlled breathing can
change the response of the body’s autonomic nervous system,
which controls unconscious processes such as heart rate and
digestion as well as the body’s stress response, says Dr.
Richard Brown, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at
Columbia University and co-author of “The Healing Power of the
Breath.”
Consciously changing the way you breathe appears to send a
signal to the brain to adjust the parasympathetic branch of the
nervous system, which can slow heart rate and digestion and
promote feelings of calm as well as the sympathetic system,
which controls the release of stress hormones like cortisol.
Many maladies, such as anxiety and depression, are aggravated or
triggered by stress. “I have seen patients transformed by
adopting regular breathing practices,” says Dr. Brown, who has a
private practice in Manhattan and teaches breathing workshops
around the world.
When you take slow, steady breaths, your brain gets the message
that all is well and activates the parasympathetic response,
said Dr. Brown. When you take shallow rapid breaths or hold your
breath, the sympathetic response is activated. “If you breathe
correctly, your mind will calm down,” said Dr. Patricia Gerbarg,
assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical
College and Dr. Brown’s co-author
Dr. Chris Streeter, an associate professor of psychiatry and
neurology at Boston University, recently completed a small study
in which she measured the effect of daily yoga and breathing on
people with diagnoses of major depressive disorder.
After 12 weeks of daily yoga and coherent breathing, the
subjects’ depressive symptoms significantly decreased and their
levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid, a brain chemical that has
calming and anti-anxiety effects, had increased. The research
was presented in May at the International Congress on
Integrative Medicine and Health in Las Vegas. While the study
was small and lacked a control group, Dr. Streeter and her
colleagues are planning a randomized controlled trial to further
test the intervention.
“The findings were exciting,” she said. “They show that a
behavioral intervention can have effects of similar magnitude as
an antidepressant.”
Controlled breathing may also affect the immune system.
Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina divided
a group of 20 healthy adults into two groups. One group was
instructed to do two sets of 10-minute breathing exercises,
while the other group was told to read a text of their choice
for 20 minutes. The subjects’ saliva was tested at various
intervals during the exercise. The researchers found that the
breathing exercise group’s saliva had significantly lower levels
of three cytokines that are associated with inflammation and
stress. The findings were published in the journal BMC
Complementary and Alternative Medicine in August.
Here are three basic breathing exercises to try on your own.
Coherent Breathing
If you have the time to learn only one technique, this is the
one to try. In coherent breathing, the goal is to breathe at a
rate of five breaths per minute, which generally translates into
inhaling and exhaling to the count of six. If you have never
practiced breathing exercises before, you may have to work up to
this practice slowly, starting with inhaling and exhaling to the
count of three and working your way up to six.
Sitting upright or lying down, place your hands on your belly.
Slowly breathe in, expanding your belly, to the count of five.
Pause.
Slowly breathe out to the count of six.
Work your way up to practicing this pattern for 10 to 20 minutes
a day.
Stress Relief
When your mind is racing or you feel keyed up, try Rock and Roll
breathing, which has the added benefit of strengthening your
core.
Sit up straight on the floor or the edge of a chair.
Place your hands on your belly.
As you inhale, lean forward and expand your belly.
As you exhale, squeeze the breath out and curl forward while
leaning backward; exhale until you’re completely empty of
breath.
Repeat 20 times.
Energizing HA Breath
When the midafternoon slump hits, stand up and do some quick
breathwork to wake up your mind and body.
Stand up tall, elbows bent, palms facing up.
As you inhale, draw your elbows back behind you, palms
continuing to face up.
Then exhale quickly, thrusting your palms forward and turning
them downward, while saying “Ha” out loud.
Repeat quickly 10 to 15 times.
If you want to learn more about breathing exercise methods, you
can also choose to use some breathing exercise equipment, such
as OPUMP, which provides a variety of breathing training
courses, including enhancing lung capacity, enhancing lung
function, training breathing rhythm, helping to restore lung
damage and improve breathing difficulties.
HTML https://theopump.com/
These courses can improve physical fitness, improve sleep
quality, increase lung strength, make breathing easier.
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