Diaphragmatic breathing. What on earth is that, right?? It’s a fancy term for deep breathing using your diaphragm. Why is it important? Let’s try an exercise to help figure that out: lay down if you can, but if you can’t, sitting works. Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach. Now breathe as you normally do and try to notice a couple of things: Do either of your hands move? If one of your hands does move, is it the one on your stomach or the one on your chest? If you’re a busy, occasionally stressed out person, my guess is that one of two things happened: neither of your hands moved much at all OR your hand on your chest moved.
So why does this matter? It matters because how you breathe affects how you feel. When you’re stressed out, scared, angry, etc., you take shorter, quicker breaths into your lungs. When you take shorter quicker breaths into your lungs, you set off an entire stress reaction in your body. Your heart rate increases, you might sweat, it’s more difficult to focus. And it’s all of these physiological reactions that make you feel even more stressed. Its one big cycle. The good news is that you can interrupt this cycle by changing how you breathe. Here’s how: when you notice yourself experiencing any unpleasant emotion, immediately start taking big, deep breaths into your stomach, NOT YOUR LUNGS, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. If you’re alone or so inclined, go ahead and put your hand back on your stomach; you should feel your stomach fill up with air and rise up lifting your hand. That’s how you know that you’re doing it right. The magic of this technique is that it’s as far from magic as you can get…its pure physiology. If you do this in a moment of stress, sadness, anger, etc., even if you only do it for 60 seconds, you will feel differently. Once you try it out and see for yourself start practicing it more often. The more you practice breathing using your diaphragm, the more natural it will become and the less stressed you‘ll feel. It’s nice when we can make our bodies work for us rather than against us right?
Check out this visual demo at: http://www.cchs.net/health/health-info/docs/2400/2409.asp?index=9445
Diaphragmatic breathing. What on earth is that, right?? It’s a fancy term for deep breathing using your diaphragm. Why is it important? Let’s try an exercise to help figure that out: lay down if you can, but if you can’t, sitting works. Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach. Now breathe as you normally do and try to notice a couple of things: Do either of your hands move? If one of your hands does move, is it the one on your stomach or the one on your chest? If you’re a busy, occasionally stressed out person, my guess is that one of two things happened: neither of your hands moved much at all OR your hand on your chest moved.
So why does this matter? It matters because how you breathe affects how you feel. When you’re stressed out, scared, angry, etc., you take shorter, quicker breaths into your lungs. When you take shorter quicker breaths into your lungs, you set off an entire stress reaction in your body. Your heart rate increases, you might sweat, it’s more difficult to focus. And it’s all of these physiological reactions that make you feel even more stressed. Its one big cycle. The good news is that you can interrupt this cycle by changing how you breathe. Here’s how: when you notice yourself experiencing any unpleasant emotion, immediately start taking big, deep breaths into your stomach, NOT YOUR LUNGS, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. If you’re alone or so inclined, go ahead and put your hand back on your stomach; you should feel your stomach fill up with air and rise up lifting your hand. That’s how you know that you’re doing it right. The magic of this technique is that it’s as far from magic as you can get…its pure physiology. If you do this in a moment of stress, sadness, anger, etc., even if you only do it for 60 seconds, you will feel differently. Once you try it out and see for yourself start practicing it more often. The more you practice breathing using your diaphragm, the more natural it will become and the less stressed you‘ll feel. It’s nice when we can make our bodies work for us rather than against us right?
Check out this visual demo at: http://www.cchs.net/health/health-info/docs/2400/2409.asp?index=9445