Are you feeling anxious? If you are not sure, watch your breathing. Because your breathing can tell you what kind of mood you are in. And it can also help you relieve anxiety.
Normally, no matter how much free time we have, there is one activity that we must do all the time without stopping, which is breathing. You must think it’s funny because if we talk about someone who doesn’t breathe, doesn’t that mean someone who has died? Yes, he or she has died, that’s right. But have you ever noticed that while you are excited about the last digits of the first prize, or reading the news about a shooting that has killed tens or hundreds, or when you are looking at the number of COVID-19 patients each day, do you know how many seconds you stop breathing?
When you are angry or in the midst of something intense, do you know how many seconds you stop breathing? Sometimes, a well-meaning friend might come up to you and say to you in the midst of anger, “Breathe in, breathe out,” or “Breathe slowly.” So what does breathing have to do with this? It seems that breathing plays a role in emotions and feelings.
“Email Apnea”
Breath, a new book by James Nestor, a science and sports journalist who has written for Outside Dwell, The New York Times, and many others. His book explains why modern humans are the worst at living basic lives today. People on Earth are breathing through their mouths and chests, and everyone is doing it too fast, too fast. Or sometimes they stop breathing suddenly because they receive an email or a text message. This phenomenon is called “email apnea.” Of course, this phenomenon happens to office workers almost every day. While they are reading those messages, they hold their breath for almost half a minute without even realizing it.
“The rate and depth at which we breathe are crucial to our mental state.”
Elissa Epel, a professor at UC San Francisco, has investigated whether using new breathing techniques can help reduce anxiety. Our regular breathing may be the key to finding peace in our lives. It may seem strange, but we breathe all the time. Why is our life so chaotic?
“How does breathing calm us down?”
Feeling anxious? We often try to calm our anxiety by changing our thinking — asking ourselves the worst-case scenario, interrupting ourselves when we catch ourselves ruminating, or seeking therapy. But breathing is a different approach. It bypasses the complexities of the mind and focuses directly on the body. Instead of trying to figure out that you’re not anxious, try something more concrete — such as taking slow, rhythmic breaths or breathing through one nostril. Sometimes, it can bring immediate relief.
“Regular breathing exercises may help you feel more calm in your daily life.”
In a 2017 study, people with severe anxiety were invited to take a relaxation class in which they were taught diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing, in which they took deep breaths instead of shallow chest breathing. They were required to practice at home twice a day. The results were seen after eight weeks. Everyone who took the class reported feeling less anxious, with a reduced breathing rate, slower breathing, and decreased skin conductivity, indicating that their anxiety had indeed been reduced with the breathing exercises.
“Just the way you breathe can push stress away or promote relaxation in your body.”
If you breathe really shallow and fast, it will adjust your nervous system. You will start to feel tension and anxiety. But if you breathe slowly, your body will respond to the stress. These benefits of breathing can be proven by participants who took a 12-week short-term breathing yoga class. They reported that they had more control over their stress. Anxiety no longer debilitated them. One of the participants reported that he had significantly increased his confidence, mindfulness, and spirit. In addition, three of the participants were able to return to paid work, another got a job that he had always wanted, and another was able to consider going back to work, having been unable to do so for many years.
“Breathing is like sending a message to your nervous system. You will be anxious or relaxed, depending on the message you send.”
Technically, breathing influences our nervous system and certain techniques can promote calmness and help in the release of hormones such as prolactin and oxytocin, which are hormones of love and bonding. If you can consciously control your breathing, you can control your anxiety. When we breathe in a certain way, we are sending a message to those emotional centers in our brain to calm down.
“Just one wrong breath can escalate the threat of anxiety.”
When you breathe rapidly and start to feel anxious, you will start to interpret those symptoms in different ways. Look for the cause of those anxiety by starting to make connections between things you are experiencing. But if you can connect your anxiety to a faulty breathing habit, it means you can change the way you breathe to reduce the level of threat that the anxiety is causing. Rapid breathing can trigger anxiety, causing your limbs to go numb, a headache to start, or you may throw up after a favorite meal. Don’t let that happen to you just because you have no control over your breathing.
“Breathing can be the first step to reducing stress and relieving anxiety.”
If you’re looking to practice breathing exercises for better physical and mental health, there are a number of techniques you can try. While these shouldn’t be considered a replacement for therapy or treatment for severe anxiety, they can be free and easy tools that can provide both short-term relief and long-term benefits. Some examples of well-researched techniques include deep breathing with a narrowed throat, making a slapping sound, deep inhalation and exhalation, nostril breathing by inhaling through one nostril and exhaling through the other, and sometimes breath holding.
“Box Breathing”
There are many variations of box breathing, which is derived from Sama Vritti. The method is that you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 and repeat. Box breathing is not just about waking up every morning, doing 10 minutes of box breathing and all your worries disappear. It is important to be conscious of how you breathe in your daily life, or at least when you are reading that email at work or watching the news in the morning.
Conclusion
All this research shows how much our bodies influence our minds. Living in today’s world has become an anxiety-inducing experience, as everything seems to move through each day like a race for survival. Not being able to breathe remains one of our deepest and most important concerns.
If our breathing is signaling to our brain that something is wrong, it’s no wonder we feel anxious. And it’s no wonder that these breathing techniques can be deeply healing.
“Air is like food that we have to eat every day, and breathing is like eating that food. If you want to have good physical and mental health, you need to eat properly, not chewing the cud and not being too greedy.”
Reference:
Feeling anxious? The way you breathe could be adding to it
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