Breathe! Using Breath To Calm The Body, Improve Your Health, and Boost Your Mood
Nowadays, there is an increased number of people who seek relaxation and health along with the use of different methods to minimize chronic stress. If you are seeking ways to relax, using breath as the relaxation technique could be your solution! Focusing on breathing is not new, and there is a clinical term that is used to define the art of consciously changing your breath to achieve an altered state, known as breathwork therapy.
Breathwork is relatively new to the spotlight and is defined as any kind of breathing or breathing technique done to create a specific result due to an alteration in breathing patterns. It is rooted in many Eastern concepts and principles and is based on Buddhism, yoga, meditation, and tai chi, among other related practices.
Why Practice Breathwork?
As to figuring out the purpose of practicing breathwork, numerous factors could make you require the practice or benefit from it. Some practices involve breathwork with or without the guidance of a professional in the breathing techniques to help in enhancing one’s relaxation, mood, and self-awareness and as a way of dealing with emotional stress.
Benefits of Breathwork
Can Help Calm Down Body
It is also important to note that breathwork is associated with antistress training, and one of the many advantages of continual breathwork practice is the opportunity to come into a system’s parasympathetic state.
This is important because a sympathetic or stressed state, which many of us constantly remain in, is detrimental to our health. In one of the studies, it was found that weekly remnants of a relaxation protocol, including yoga with relaxation breath, reduced subjects’ SVR and increased their heart rate variability compared to the subjects with no relaxation control. Breath work has also been found to reduce cortisol levels, which are always high during periods of stress.
Can Improve Overall Health
Most of the time, we never notice how we breathe or fail to breathe properly. It may not require any explanation, but breathing is important for all operations in the body.
Breathing is especially critical for circulating oxygen during the frame, increasing blood oxygen degrees, and enhancing universal lung function. Mindful deep respiration additionally enables “teach” our lung potential.
Breath is another critical aspect that determines the circulation of oxygen in the body, blood oxygen saturation, and lung health. It also contributes to performing or expanding the lungs by getting a breath of air, eye-opening, and being conscious while at the same time easing the nerves.
Can Improve Your Mood
Breath work may also be useful in having numerous advantages for enhancing the individual moods of people with low moods that are chronic. Available literature reveals that increased engagement in yoga with practicing proper breathing helps to reduce the extent of depressive-like behaviors in people with MDD. If you have never been clinically diagnosed with MDD, it can be inferred that you could also realize severable gains in your mood from regular breathwork practice.
Popular Forms of Breathing Exercises
Some of the many kinds of breathwork are concerned with actively practicing a proper way of breathing.
- Pranayama
- People who engage in yoga or meditation exercises will surely have a clue as to what pranayama entails and or may have at one point practiced it. This form is concerned with the impact of breath on the physical physique particularly by purging the organism of feelings.
- Rebirthing
- This is another form of breath work where the purpose is to circulate energy in the body through the usage of conscious breath.
- Holotropic Breathwork
- This is a practice created by two scientists known as Stanislav Grof; this practice entails some special panting rhythm, which supposedly helps induce a state of trance.
- Transformational Breathwork
- This term is used to refer to any breathwork that results in a change of a person or his or her spirit.
Well-Known Types of ‘Breathwork Exercises’
- Alternate nostril breathing
- Box breathing is having to take in air through the nostrils then being able to hold that breath before exhaling that air through the mouth and then being able to hold the empty lungs.
- The recommended breathing technique is to inhale for four, exhale for eight, and hold the breath for seven.
- The exercise that should be carried out is where the adult lays his/her hands on the less-moving chest and stomach and then proceeds to breathe in and out.
- Pursed lip breathing (away from the lips, using the diaphragm, in through the nose, hold a full breath, exhale slowly through pursed lips)
