You know you need to breathe to live, but did you realize that there are particular ways that you can breathe that will improve your overall health and wellness? It’s true. The manner in which you breathe can make you happier and more fit than ever before.
Why how you breathe matters
One way in which breathing in a structured way helps is that it can reduce your negative responses to stress. It does this by slowing your heart rate down to healthy levels and relieving your mind of worries and concerns that seem to overtake it. It gets you more in tune with your body so you recognize when life becomes a bit too much to take.
Breathing can also be used to get you going. It can be performed in a way that motivates you to keep moving forward and give you the ability to have the energy to cross items off your to-do list.
Some exercises to try
If you’re looking to ease worries or reduce pain, you’ll want to focus on abdominal breathing. Do this by resting one hand on your chest and the other on your tummy. Breathe in deeply so that your abdomen rises more than your chest (which would take around a four count) and then hold for a count of seven. Breathe out to a count of eight and then repeat the process.
Once you get comfortable with this process, you can remove your hands and imagine positives being taken into your body when you inhale and negatives being released when you exhale. This will clear your mind and promote affirmative feelings and actions.
To increase the amount of energy you feel, you can try the stimulating breathe technique. Sit with good posture and breathe rapid breaths in and out through your nose only. You want the inhalation and exhalation to be at the same rate.
When first trying this technique, don’t go over 15 seconds so you don’t put yourself in a position of hyperventilating. You can add five second increments once you get used to this style of breathing.
How you breathe matters. Focus on your inhalations and exhalations and you can slow down or speed up your system at will. How great is that?
