JUST BREATHE FOR IMPROVED FOCUS
SOMETHING THAT SEEMS SO SIMPLE CAN HAVE SO MANY VARIATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Iknow that there is something that I need to pay closer attention to when I start to see multiple mentions, articles, videos or programs about the same topic in a short space of time.
It’s happened several times and it seems, particularly these days, that once you start reading about or researching something you start to receive unsolicited information and messages about that particular topic.
I suspect it has more than a little to do with those clever but irritating algorithms or the fact that the brain now picks up on everything to do with the topic that was probably there before but it hadn’t noticed.
Just like when you buy a new car, they suddenly seem to be everywhere.
The latest one for me is about breathing. It’s interesting because, once we’re checked at birth to ensure that we’re breathing properly, we don’t really get any other instructions about how to breathe unless we go looking for it or need to do it differently for some reason.
It goes without saying that breathing is vital, yet we’re not always doing it effectively; that’s what those messages I was getting were reminding me about.
The thing is it’s not until we start to focus on something like breathing that we realise that we may not be doing it to the best of our ability and therefore have room for improvement.
You may be thinking ‘everyone knows how to breathe don’t they?’ and you’d be right … to a certain point, because it’s being controlled unconsciously via the autonomic nervous system so we don’t actually have to think about it.
However, once you start to find out more about it and notice how you are breathing at certain times, you pick up on your habits and what might need improvement.
In my case, I realised that I breathe quite shallowly a lot of the time, sometimes through my nose and other times through my mouth.
When I’m eating or concentrating on something, I seem to stop altogether at times which I realise probably isn’t that helpful.
Then, every now again, I realise I need to take a longer, deeper breath which turns into a sigh.
When you start to pay attention, you may find that you breathe quite differently at times and, if you’re looking to gain some benefits from changing that, there are many different types of breathing to choose from that can help.
For example, I remember hearing about the Buteyko method many years ago because my father was being taught it to relieve the emphysema brought on by smoking for many years; apparently it can also be useful for those with asthma.
Various types of breathing (pranayama) are taught in yoga. The two most common ones being the ujaii and the nadi shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) techniques – best to look those up and read about the benefits as I’m not a yoga expert.
And then there’s the 4-7-8 and the 7-11 (not just a convenience store it seems).
In most of these cases, one major benefit of bringing our awareness to the breath and practising different types of breath is that it shifts our focus and we are able to get out of our head and into our body.
The brain thinks it’s smart, but can really only focus on one thing at a time so once you get it to start counting the in and out breaths it is less likely to race off chasing random thoughts.
Effective breathing can also reduce stress levels, lower your heart rate and blood pressure, improve circulation, clear foggy thinking, support emotional regulation, regulate your body’s reaction to stress and fatigue and improve the quality of sleep and improve performance.
If you haven’t being paying it much attention recently then the first step is to bring awareness to your breath and how you are breathing.
Through the nose or mouth?
High in the chest or deep in the belly? How long is your in breath and out breath? Are they even or is one longer than the other?
How does it change at different times? Then you can experiment with the various breathing techniques to find what suits you and what you want to achieve.