Breathing is an essential part of every moment of our life. I have been teaching myself breathing and meditation in the last few years, which has helped my life continually get better. I do breathwork almost every day when I feel anxious, uncomfortable, or need to get to sleep. Here are three reasons to breathe more, more often:
First, breathing big breaths and sighs bring a sense of relief to your body, and the mind-body connection tells your body that everything is okay and that you can calm down. Think about it this way, if you were a deer hunted by a cougar, your body takes shorter breathe and starts to trigger other hormones that tell the deer to RUN! If you are breathing normally, your body tells itself that everything is safe and that you can take your time stress-free. If you take breathing one step further with big breaths and sighs, you will bring your heart rate down and calm down more. I mean, that’s a sigh of relief.
Second, it helps with your focus. When you can breathe, you relax, your heart rate will come down, and you calm down. Instead of being overrun with cortisol (the flight or fight hormone), standard in American everyday life, we can do big belly breaths that will calm us down and open up more headspace for more creativity, distraction-free work, and staying present.
Third, it winds you down so you can sleep better. Sleep is the key to helping someone get healthier because it’s our body’s time to recover and re-energize so we can take on our days with more energy and a clearer headspace every day.