Breathing in energy and breathing out stress. Breathing is an ideal way to improve your health, reduce your stress and increase your energy levels. The problem is most of you breathe poorly. You are taught to shallow breathe through the accumulation of stresses in your life, being told to stop crying as a child, or ‘suck it up’ on the sporting field.
Remember being told ... “take a deep breath"
Wondered why you should, how does this help you when you are stressed?
Well, sayings have been distorted over the years. As have their meanings and directions…
Most of you hear this and immediately think of breathing in deeply, then holding your breath. It actually means to breathe in deeply and breathe out deeply. Then it will help to remove stress or increase energy.
So…
Breathing is essential to stress relief and increasing energy.
Most adults shallow breathe. We pant like a dog, rather than breathe deeply and relaxed. How has this occurred, you may be wondering? How should we breathe?
What Types of Breathing are There?
There is … Good breathing … or Bad breathing…
Easy isn’t it. But what is good breathing?
Good breathing is a process of having a deep, relaxed and calm cycle of breath. There should be no pause in the cycle and the cycle should be even … breathing in and out being the same length.
Good breathing needs to be relaxed, it should be relaxed and calm at a resting level. It is impossible to walk around having large deep breaths. You will hyperventilate and fall over. A good resting breathing rate is … relaxed, calm and deep.
Breathing deeply is better for you overall. It creates relaxation, increases energy and promotes health. From an Eastern view-point, energy moves through the body in channels. Breathing deeply (relaxed, calm and at rest) moves energy through the channels, preventing and removing blockages causing ill health and disease.
Most of you have a poor or shallow breathing cycle. Where we breathe in less energy and release less stress than we should. Poor or bad breathing will be shallow, interrupted in the cycle, with pauses at the end of the breath. When you pause in your breathing cycle you are preventing energy coming in, or stress leaving the body.
Taken to extremes, poor breathing can lead to sleep apnea where you actually stop breathing when you are asleep … sometimes for a minute or more. Poor breathing can lead to respiratory problems, fatigue and many stress related illnesses.
The big thing to know and understnad is this ... how did you learn to breathe poorly and can you change it?
These questions will be answered in our next article on breathing and its' effects on stress.
