Deep Breathing - For Beginners
Last week we highlighted a popular breathing exercise that we often recommend in our office called Box Breathing. You simply cycle through a 4 second inhalation, 4 second hold, 4 second exhalation, 4 second hold, and repeat for cycles or time. This is a simple yet highly effective tool to hack your nervous system, manage stress and anxiety, as well as focusing your attention to the present moment. In this article we take Box Breathing a little bit deeper (no pun intended) and help provide you with a little more context into why this type of breathing works so well and how to maximize each breath.
You may not know this but the way you breath dictates your physiology, how you feel and how you perform. How many breaths you take per minute can greatly influence these factors as well. Think of how people breathe when they're in a highly stressful situation, they're taking very quick and shallow breaths, probably in and out of their mouth and there is an ever growing look of distress on their face. This happens because this type of breathing pattern activates more of your sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight system that is preparing you for a stressful situation. This would actually be highly beneficial if we were in a situation where our life was potentially at risk. But, more often than not we are not quite in the life threatening situation our bodies and minds think we may be in. So if our breath can hack into the stressful breathing pattern it should also help us access a more calm or meditative breathing pattern (more beneficial) by doing the opposite.
Learning how to breathe deeply can become one of the greatest tools you have to shift your mood, focus and performance to your benefit. Breathing deeply begins first by understanding how to engage and use your diaphragm muscle while breathing. Here is an exercise to try out: To begin breathing deeply, place one hand on the middle of your belly and the other hand on the middle of your chest. Now notice which hand moved first? Your chest or your belly? Chances are that it was your chest first and belly second. Now the second question: How far did the breath travel? If your chest moved first and your belly second (if at all) then this would indicate that your breathing is shallow. Now paying attention to these two things will help you with your breathing exercise.
Deep Breathing Exercise:
You will follow the Box Breathing exercise in last week's article: 4 second inhalation, 4 second hold, 4 second exhalation, 4 second hold, and repeat for cycles or time. You will add the following steps to practice breathing deeply.
Place one hand in the middle of your chest and the other in the middle of your belly.
Take a deep breath IN through your nose, the belly should rise first and the chest should remain stationary until the belly is full. Pull the breath down into your pelvis allowing your belly to expand fully and freely. When you have maximized your belly expansion with your breath your chest will rise and fill naturally.
Once you have taken a full breath, breathe OUT slowly by reversing the order in step 2. Chest will go down first and belly last. Aim to breath out for 2x longer then it took you to breathe in.