By: Angela Echevarria
Published: January 17. 2025
When you hear people talk about coping skills, deep breathing or breathing exercises might be something you notice is often included. There are many physical and mental benefits to deep breathing that make it such a powerful tool for those that are struggling.
1. Reducing Anxiety
Breathing exercises have been proven to stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system which promotes relaxation unlike the sympathetic nervous system which causes the body’s natural stress response. It also lowers cortisol, the hormone that produces anxiety and stress, as a result of the oxygen increase in the brain. By lessening stress, they also lead to better sleep and improved cognitive function, such as better emotional regulation, memory, decision-making, and attention span.
2. Improve Lung Function
Breathing exercises have been shown to improve and strengthen lung and diaphragm function. This leads to lowered hyperventilation symptoms in people with asthma as well as lowered dyspnea, or shortness of breath, in those with COPD.
3. Improve Heart Health
It’s shown that breathing exercises can help balance fluctuating blood pressure and lessen the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. It also helps strengthen your core muscles and
improves exercise tolerance, which helps heart health even more.
4. Reducing Pain
Deep breathing has been known to reduce acute pain from surgeries and labor, and chronic
issues like lower back pain. Deep breathing triggers our body’s own natural opiate compounds to be released, therefore improving mood and pain tolerance. The research on this tells us to choose deep breathing over holding our breath when we are in pain.
Now that the benefits are clear, we will go over some breathing exercises you can try at home.
1. 4-7-8 Method
When using the 4-7-8 method, first be sure to start with good posture. Then we inhale strongly for four seconds, hold for seven, and exhale for eight. Try to do at least four of the breaths consecutively.
2. Box Breathing (aka sama vritti pranayama)
This is called box breathing because many people are taught to do it while visualizing along
each side of a square during every step of the breath. Start with good posture and inhale for
four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four and hold for four, before repeating for best results.
3. Bumblebee Breath (aka bhramari pranayama)
Start with good posture and inhale through your nose. Then exhale through your mostly closed mouth with a hum. This is where it’s most well known monikers “Bumblebee Breath” and “Humming Breath” come from.
Comments