Less Stress with the Breath

Finding Calm in Our Lives

Just as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz had the power, all along, in her glittering red slippers, you have always had power to cope with stress and to relax your body--only instead of finding it in a pair a shoes, you’ll find it in your breath.

Yogis have known for thousands of years that breath is the key to vitality and health, and in the last few decades, Western science has begun to catch up. Studies have analyzed the impacts of focused breathing, and scientists now realize that the yogis were on to something.

We can alter our breath to release harmful reactions to stress and to stimulate the relaxation response. And we don’t have to escape to an ashram or undergo years of intense training to reap the benefits of breath work. Dozens, if not hundreds, of methods exist, ranging from extremely simple to complex and intricate. Some you can do while driving your car and others involve hand positions known as mudras. Either way, the effects (big or small) are immediate.

Learning How to Breathe

Thirty years ago, if someone told me they were going to teach me to breathe, I would have asked what they’d been smoking. But today I realize just how poorly many of us breathe and how few of us understand the power that is literally under our noses. I’ve had students, after just a few classes on breath work, tell me that they were able to lower their blood pressure or fall asleep at night or walk calmly into stressful meetings at work.

To give you a sample of how quickly just a few minutes of breath focus can change how you feel, try the following by spending several breaths for each step.

• · Notice your breath. Do the inhales and exhales differ in length? Is the pace constant or does it fluctuate? How far down do you feel the breath? Where to you notice it most?
• · Let out a few sighs, exhaling through the mouth.
• · With lips closed, maintain a long out breath.
• · Repeat this phrase silently in your mind, “My breath slows and grows long.” Take your time.
• · Mentally count the length of each inhale and each exhale. Adjust the exhales so they are longer than the inhales.
• · Lengthen both the exhale and inhale, so both are a bit slower. But do not strain, maintain a comfortable breathing pace. Take several breaths to find the longest cycle that you can maintain while staying relaxed.
• · Steady your breath by maintaining this pace for at least five breaths.

How do you feel? Hopefully more centered and relaxed. Just from typing out these steps and thinking about them, my breath has steadied and slowed.

It feels good to focus on the breath, and it seems to carry with it a sense of calm, but can we really alter our health by changing the way we breathe?

The Science Behind the Breath

While there are more studies regarding meditation than breathing, meditation and breath work are interconnected. Meditation involves focusing on an object, which is frequently the breath. Breath work takes this focus one step further by altering the breath. Focusing on any object, be it the breath or a phrase or an image, steadies the mind and releases stress. Breathing exercises do even more than that, they change the breath and thus have the potential to impact the physical body even faster than meditation.

We know that manipulating the breath can decrease your heart rate and your blood pressure. Additionally, it can increase the theta waves in your brain, which is another way of say you’ll feel more relaxed.

While some researchers look at hour-long daily breathing practices, I found, during ten years of teaching breathing, that students benefit from conscious breathing in as little as ten minutes a day.

And that’s just the beginning of what breath can do. As magical as it may sound for the inhale and exhale to hold such power, it’s based on an intimate connection between our nervous system and the breath.

The Nervous System and the Breath

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the question: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Today, I’m more interested in the question: What came first, erratic and shallow breathing or stressful thoughts?

When you are stressed the sympathetic nervous system, which can stimulate a fight-of-flight response, kicks in, causing a rapid heart rate, increased blood pressure, and faster shallow breathing. This is fine—even useful—for short periods of time, like when you need a burst of energy to catch a child heading toward a busy street.

On the other hand, when you are relaxed—really relaxed—the parasympathetic nervous system takes over, thus lowering the heart rate and blood pressure, as well as slowing, steadying, and deepening the breath. This is a time for food to be digested and healing to take place. So what does that have to do with consciously altering the breath?

Let’s return to our original question: What came first, erratic and shallow breathing or stressful thoughts? Most of us think the stressful events or thoughts rule our breath—okay, most of us don’t think about the breath at all, but if we did odds are we’d be blaming stress on its changes. And for the most part, we’d be right. A body’s reaction to stress does alter the way we breathe (as described above). However it’s a two-way street.

Changes in our stress level affect the breath; changes in the breath affect our stress level. In other words, we can choose to alter the way we breathe in order to lower the stress in our bodies. This is so important, it bears repeating: Change your breath to lessen your stress.

Conclusion

While therapy, aerobic exercise, and medications may have their place in helping to reduce harmful impacts of leading a stressful life, the simplest and quickest way to alleviate symptoms of too much stress can be found in the very air we breathe.