Utilizing the Breath
We are told all the time to “take a deep breath” or “just breath” – to the point that it’s become a cliché and at risk of not being taken seriously. However, the breath is one of the most accessible, simple, and effective tools that someone can use in their daily lives to improve their health. Breathing has both mental and physical benefits that interact and really make a positive impact.
Physical Effects
The simple act of breathing keeps us alive, but how we breathe can take us from solely performing a necessary function to really nourishing our body. Breathing deeply from our diaphragm activates our body’s parasympathetic nervous system (also known as our rest-and-digest response). This system causes relaxed muscles, decreased blood pressure, and lower heart rate. These physiological changes lead us to feel more relaxed overall, which helps us interact with the world in a more emotionally regulated way and utilize the executive functioning areas of our brain to think more clearly. However, if we breathe quickly or draw those breaths in from higher up our torso in our chest, our body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated (also known as a fight-or-flight response), which results in muscle tension, increased blood pressure, higher heart rate, and stress hormones like cortisol being released. There are times when this fight-or-flight response is adaptive (e.g., if someone is chasing us), but for the most part in today’s society, our survival is not under direct threat. However, we often still respond to modern stressors (e.g., talking in front of a group of people) with that same fight-or-flight response. Our body being engaged in a stress response for too long causes damaging physical and mental health consequences. When stress activates our sympathetic nervous system (i.e., our fight-or-flight response), deep breathing can counteract these effects and induce a calming sensation and give our bodies a break.
Mental Effects
People have used the breath for centuries, especially in Eastern cultures, for mental health benefits as well. The breath is the perfect anchor to the present because we are always breathing. By focusing on the breath, we are grounding ourselves in the present moment. And if we are engaged in the present moment, then we are no longer worrying about the future or ruminating on the past. The breath can serve as a cue to return our attention to the present – to whatever we are doing or whoever we are interacting with and get back to living our life rather than living in our head. In my sport psychology work with athletes, I often offer the breath as a tool to help an athlete move on from a mistake (e.g., thinking “let go” while exhaling after a deep breath to remind an athlete to let go of the mistake and now focus on the next play) or to help prepare for the next play (e.g., a basketball player taking a breath in their free throw routine to calm the body and focus on the shot rather than worry about not making it). In sports (and in life), the most important moment is the present moment, so it is imperative that athletes have a tool that can help them recenter.
Tips for Utilizing the Breath
When you practice deep breathing, put one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach. As you breathe, the hand on your stomach should be the one rising and falling while the hand on your chest should remain relatively still.
When starting out with using the breath as a coping strategy for stress, I encourage people to start practicing deep breathing when they are not necessarily stressed. This gives you the opportunity to get more comfortable with the exercise without the challenge of doing it in a high-stress situation. The more that you practice on your own when you are relatively calm, the more effective your deep breathing will be when you use it in response to a stressful situation. Your body will be more accustomed to breathing from your diaphragm and your mind will also associate deep breathing with a state of relaxation.
When you breathe, try to focus on your inhales and exhales, attending to the actual act of breathing as much as you can.
Counting the breaths can help direct the attention.
Adding a mantra can also be an aid to keeping the mind clear of other thoughts and instead focused on the breathing (e.g., thinking “breathing in calm” during the inhale and then thinking “breathing out stress” on the exhale).
Your mind will want to wander and start thinking about things other than breathing, so when (not if!) your mind wanders, just return your focus back to the breath without judgment. The more practice that you do, the less difficult it will be to keep your focus on the breath. This translates well to being in the present in your day-to-day life, as you are basically training your brain to notice when you are thinking thoughts outside of the present moment and to then direct your attention back to your immediate surroundings/environment/interaction.
Book Recommendation
If you are interested in learning more about harnessing the powers of the breath, I highly recommend that you read “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” by James Nestor (https://www.amazon.com/Breath-New-Science-Lost-Art/dp/0735213615). This book details the surprisingly diverse world of breathwork and how different ways of breathing can result in different benefits. In the review of the book, it states “modern research is showing us that even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jumps-state athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines.”
If you are interested in learning more about how you can use your breath to improve your health, you can make an appointment to meet with one of our caring therapists!
1. Contact Sunrise Counseling
2. Meet with one of our caring therapists
Mental Health Services at Sunrise Counseling in Dallas, TX
Sunrise Counseling offers a variety of other mental health services in our Dallas TX-based therapy office and offers telehealth therapy to those residing in Texas. Mental health services we provide at Sunrise Counseling include: