Spring Journal 2023: Like Navigating the Change in the Air, Changing How You Breathe Helps You Manage Stress
As we move from spring into summer, the days grow lighter, brighter, and longer, and we feel more of a rhythm between warmth and the cool breeze on the back of our necks. This change has inspired me to write about the function of breath and how life experiences and emotions impact HOW we breathe. Breath is affected by the environment outside our bodies and minds as well as inside. How we breathe influences not only the function of our bodies and minds, but also how we navigate all 4 Elements of Health (emotional, mental, physical, and social wellbeing.)
Breath is the link between our body and mind connection. It’s the main communicator between our brain, lungs, diaphragm, and heart. This function happens unconsciously to keep us alive, but through consciousness and practice we can learn to control our breath to change the way we move through, and respond to, life experiences.
My Winter 2023 Journal discussed stress. I want to expand on that discussion and how implementing a regular breathing practice can help us manage stress to improve many body and mind functions such as anxiety, depression and pain—thereby improving digestion, metabolism, blood pressure and circulation. Controlled breath enhances your cognitive function, immunity and heart and lung health. When you implement regular breathwork, your mind and body will change visibly with time.
How Breathing Works
There is a team of valuable members responsible for the process of breath that includes the mouth, nose, diaphragm, brain, heart, and lungs. Together they function like an orchestra, and each has a role that impacts the rhythm and flow of breath and the beat of your heart. If one or more of these areas are compromised, then our breath will be impacted with a spiral effect on the overall function of our body and mind. When we’re overwhelmed, or unable to regulate emotions, or experiencing unmanageable stress or pain, the functions of the body become stressed and create a dysfunction of breath.
In short, using breathwork to manage your stress, emotions, mental health, anxiety, and pain will improve your overall function and well-being.
Practicing Awareness to Train the Breath:
Start by bringing attention to your breath. Feel it. Acknowledge where your breath is moving through your body. Can you see your breath? Are you breathing vertically upward into your neck, chest, shoulders? Are you breathing horizontally into the front-back-sides of your rib cage? How much breath is circulating through you throughout your day? How do you breathe in response to challenges, emotions, and experiences? The idea is to become aware of your breath, then change it.
With every inhale, concentrated air with oxygen enters the body. When you exhale, the body removes carbon dioxide, toxins and wastes.
The brain is the transmitter and conductor for all these processes. The lungs are the warehouse for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide with our blood, which circulates to our heart. The diaphragm is a very important muscle that moves to assist the lungs in their function. The heart is the pumping system that exchanges and circulates the oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout our body. When one or all these organs become compromised, the movement and transition of “oxygen in/carbon dioxide out” suffers and leads to difficulty breathing and decreased function. Simply improving how you breathe improves function, vitality, and health.
How Breath is influenced by Stress:
Stress creates a “flight or fight” response which taxes our nervous system, which regulates all systems and functions in our body including respiration, circulation, digestion, excretion, and cognition. Stress can be emotional, mental, physical, and social. It can be periodic or chronic. Stress impacts how we breathe, in turn impacting our physical body and mind.
When we experience stress, we activate our nervous system, triggering physical reactions such as increased heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol in the blood stream. It disrupts sleep and digestion. Stress also increases inflammation, pain, headaches and fatigue while decreasing tissue repair and immunity. However, when the stress is removed or managed, the mind and body will relax and settle to a state of “rest and digest,” improving or reversing all the symptoms mentioned above. Through the practice of breathwork, we can tend to our nervous system and change/control these functions.
Tools to Change the Rhythm and Flow of Breath:
To establish a practise around breath, begin with awareness, stillness, posture, and body positioning. Then determine an interval of time. Whether it’s two or five minutes every day, or twice a day, you need consistency. Practise proper alignment and posture to support improved breathing function, along with implementation of other exercises to support the body to move more freely and hold less resistance and pain.
My Personal Experience with Breathwork
We have all experienced the recent stresses of the pandemic and global financial uncertainty, in addition to our personal challenges, traumas, and losses. I want to share how I implemented and committed to a regular breathing practice, allowing me to manage, navigate, heal, and move through my own life challenges.
For most of my life I experienced anxiety and stress, although I was largely unaware of how it was embedded in my being. In 2020, when many aspects of my life became challenged both professionally and personally, my body, my gut, and the way I felt started to speak to me. I chose to listen. I realized I had to change to support the longevity of my body and mind, achieve deeper healing, and guide myself to living more of the life I wanted to live.
I committed to, and implemented, a series of breathwork practices into the rhythm of my day. I committed to it like brushing my teeth. I learned to be still and train my mind to see, feel and nurture my breath. I trusted the process. In this I was able to implement other practices that would challenge my breath, challenge my mind, and further fuel and nurture my body from the inside out. Through meditation, regular cold-water ocean swimming, training, specified movement, and mobility, I progressed my breathing practice to support all the activities I love to do, such as walk, run, cycle and hike—and simply function day-to-day.
As a result of consistent practice and patience, my energy, vitality, sleep, VO2 max, blood pressure, management of hormones, and heart rate improved significantly and are better now, in my mid-forties than in my thirties. I credit this commitment to my breathing awareness practise. I feel I’m living with more of a connection to self, with a stronger center both physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. I am more present in my body, and my mind, and anxiety, stress, fear, and grief no longer control me and how I show up in the world.
Breath is the fuel and energetic force to improve your energy, longevity, vitality, and your life. The element of establishing functional breath will allow you to continue to nurture all 4 Elements of your Training and Health and support you in navigating life’s challenges that you can’t always control.
