6 things to know about the breath
Wondering why the breath is so important to live the happiest, healthier version of your life? Here’s 6 reasons why we should care about how we breathe:
1
Slow Diaphragmatic breathing has been proven to reduce stress. As we breathe deep into our abdomen, we stimulate the vagus nerve which sends signal to the brain that we are safe to relax.
2
Your inhale increases your heart rate, your blood pressure alongside many other physiological effects. This is valuable information to know, especially in a stressful situation when most likely our heart rate is racing and blood pressure increasing. If we know the inhale will increase our stress response, we can then use the exhale (which has the opposite effect) to calm the body coming back into a state of ease.
3
Each emotion has a specific breathing pattern. Think about how you laugh, cry, express shock, joy, love. Whenever we feel something in our bodies, we breath in a certain way to express that emotion. Our emotions and how we breathe are intrinsically linked.
4
The carbon dioxide (CO2) that we exhale is a vital gas in our respiratory system, without CO2 we wouldn’t be able to take up the oxygen in our blood. Carbon dioxide is responsible for the pH balance of our blood that creates the correct environment for the transfer of oxygen into our tissues to be used as energy. And the levels of CO2 in our blood (and our tolerance to it) informs the body when to breath, not the the levels of oxygen as so often is thought!
5
Breathing through our mouth dehydrates us! Yes, when you breathe through your mouth, you lose water content from the air we exhale. According to James Nestor in his book Breath, we lose 40 percent more water through mouth breathing.
6
Learning to control our breath can help us manage anxiety, stress and improve sleep. Join us weekly for BREATHE to learn tools to help you in every day life.
Ready to learn more? I offer 1:1 Breathwork sessions to learn simple tools like this, or join me weekly for BREATHE, a 60 minute, breathwork focused class.