Breathing is our most basic function. We need it to survive. But are we doing it right??
The power of breath to change our health is something I wasn’t fully aware of until recently. It has been studied for thousands of years and taught through the disciplines of yoga and meditation. Many of us have come across techniques for breathing through these practices and understand that controlling breathing can have a relaxing effect on the body. Indeed even western medicine is now coming to realise the power of breathing especially for people with anxiety. However there is so much more to breathing and I would encourage anyone who is interested in this to read the book 'Breath' by James Nestor. It goes into depth about the science of nose breathing and how many of us now mouth breath, have congestion in our nasal passages and just don’t breathe in the right way. There are some extreme exercises we can try which can push and stress the body, like Tummo the breathing style that Vim Hoff advocates. But there are other very easy and gentle exercises that we can easily incorporate into daily life. The perfect breath is 5.5 sec in and 5.5 secs out, doing this for ten minutes can calm the body, reoxygenate tissues and reinvigorate our energy. There are so many variations to try from giving the body energy to helping induce relaxation and sleep. I have been paying much more attention to my breath while working, driving, relaxing and sleeping and have realized how shallow my breath has been and probably how much I have automatically been mouth breathing. It’s given my diaphragm a good workout which by default then gives the digestive organs a massage and some good oxygenation.
Breathing is free, requires no batteries or wifi (unless you want to download some ideas) and can have profound health benefits. All it takes is a little bit of attention!