Breathing techniques
In our fast-paced world, stress is a constant companion. Whether it’s the demands of work, personal challenges, or the constant bombardment of information, stress can leave us feeling overwhelmed and depleted. But what if we could control the chaos and calm the mind? We can. With the practice of breathwork.
Stress is a natural human response to the pressure triggered by challenges and perceived threats. Interestingly, your mind cannot differentiate between physical and psychological stress. Your mind doesn’t know the difference between imminent threats and perceived danger. As a result, when we find ourselves in stressful situations, our body reacts as if the threat is real — and our body prepares for fight or flight.
One area profoundly affected by stress is our breathing. Stress disrupts our breathing patterns, causing them to become shallow, rapid, and irregular. However, ask any yogi and they will tell you
— your breath holds the key to restoring balance, managing stress, and cultivating well-being. It is an automatic process, usually occurring without conscious thought. Yet stress can directly impact our breathing, altering its natural rhythm. The good news is that by consciously engaging in breathwork exercises, you can correct and improve your breathing patterns.
Your breathing serves as a bridge between your conscious and unconscious state. By harnessing your breath, you are able to access the autonomic nervous system — the system of nerves throughout the body that regulate breath and heart rate. The system also connects your brain to your internal organs. Within this system lies the sympathetic nervous system, responsible for our fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic nervous system, governing our rest and digest state. Achieving a balance between the two is crucial for overall well-being. However, we are constantly bombarded with stressors that continually activate our fight-orflight response. Emails, deadlines, traffic, and societal pressures trigger a myriad of physiological reactions, leaving us in a chronic state of high alert. This leads directly to imbalanced nervous systems, increased anxiety, and compromised health.
Breathwork is an antidote to this epidemic. Through deliberate breathing practices, we can recalibrate our nervous system, shifting from the fight-or-flight response to the rest and digest state. By consciously engaging our breath, we stimulate the vagus nerve — the nerve that carries signals from the brain to the rest of the body — to exit the flight or fight response and restore a state of equilibrium.
The benefits of breathwork extend far beyond stress relief. By embracing conscious breathing, we tap into a wealth of opportunities such as improved mental clarity, heightened self-awareness, increased energy levels, and enhanced emotional resilience. As we deepen our breath, we flood our body with vital oxygen, nourishing our cells and revitalizing our entire being.
Angie Ferguson is an exercise physiologist and Tony Robbins Results Coach from Fort Myers.,
Florida She also is a Corrective Biomechanics Specialist, USA Triathlon Advanced Level 2 coach,
USA Cycling coach, has a Specialty in Sports Nutrition certification, and a
PHD in results! For more training tips, contact her at www.gearedup.biz