Last updated on January 27th, 2023 at 02:36 pm
What Are The Benefits Of Breathwork?
What Are The Benefits Of Breathwork?
Whenever you experience some kind of unpleasantness or fall under significant stress, the first advice you may receive is to take a deep breath and relax. Once you do it, you feel a moment of clarity – your body starts to ease up, your heart rate stabilises, and your mind becomes more balanced. That being said, do we really need to stress the importance of breathwork? Recently, its significance has taken on the world by storm – quite literally, searches for breathwork have increased six times over the course of the last five years, according to Google Trends, and its peak has been rising ever since!
Today, we would like to emphasise the benefits of controlled breathing. We will also include some techniques you can do that will do wonders for your health! The best part? Each method works, so you can choose the one that suits you best.
What Is Breathwork And How Does It Work?
The thousand-year-old practice is an excellent approach to accessing your body’s natural intelligence in order to provide healing. While there are wide varieties and styles, they all provide the same benefits. Starting from lowering your anxiety, and improving your immune system, all the way to managing your pain and focusing your mind, breathwork is considered to be the pillar of health. At this moment, we would like to provide you with some useful controlled breathing methods. However, a certified yoga instructor can properly introduce you to them before you do them for yourself.
Deep Abdominal Breathing
The breath starts by filling up the body with air by fully expanding your chest, and as you exhale, you can feel your ribs and navel pull in, and your chest drop down. By doing so, you are stimulating your abdomen, thus ensuring the full capacity of the breath. This method has been incredibly beneficial in terms of lowering your stress and anxiety levels.
Breath Of Fire
While this is a more advanced technique, it’s pretty easy to do once it’s taught by a professional instructor. The Breath Of Fire fully utilises your core muscles, thus creating a rejuvenating breath pattern. As you exhale through the nose, you activate your abdominal muscles, followed by an inhale through the nose – they relax and expand.
4-7-8 Pattern
This is one of the most popular breathing techniques, and it’s quite easy to do! You start by taking a breath for four seconds and hold it for an additional seven. This creates the perfect opportunity for the mind to clear up or “have a moment of pause”. After the seven seconds, you exhale for eight seconds – as you do this, the extended breath pattern allows a great amount of support to the immune system.
Pranayama
Pranayama is a breath practice that comes with doing yoga – meaning, you get to focus your breath as you time its duration and frequency. By doing so, you connect your body to your mind, supplying it with oxygen and removing toxins from it. Pranayama greatly improves sleep quality and reduces stress, and increases mindfulness.
What Are The Benefits Of Breathwork
This brings us to the main question – what benefits do you gain from breathwork? Simply put, the practice allows the body to trigger the most natural healing methods. Starting from your mental health to your immune system, the advantages are so widespread that it’s pretty hard to include it all in one blog post! However, we’ll try our best – here are some of the best benefits of breathwork.
Breathwork Reduces Stress
One of the biggest benefits of controlled breathing is that it instantly reduces stress levels! In terms of science, this has been proven quite often. For instance, the 1979 study from The Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology showed that breathing exercises could be used as coping strategies when experiencing stressful situations. Another study by the Frontiers in Psychology found that proper breathing can lead to lower levels of cortisone – the stress hormone. The practice is known to positively affect the nervous system by making us feel calmer, more focused and energised.
Breathwork Improves Sleep
Another great advantage of breathwork is that it greatly increases sleep quality. Additionally, it can regulate your energy levels, and in certain cases, it can be incredibly beneficial in treating insomnia. A study has proven that controlled breathing is successful in helping people who have trouble falling asleep and helping them further relax. There are many exercises that can help you settle down before you go to bed and have a good night’s sleep! A useful method here would be the 4-7-8 technique that we have covered above!
Breathwork Reduces Anxiety
In addition to reducing stress levels, breathwork can help with easing anxiety. One study shows that deep breathing techniques reduce anxiety levels in people who suffer from it. Whenever you experience a situation that causes you distress, you can always rely on controlled breathing to ground you and help you find your focus.
Breathwork Improves The Immune System
Finally, one of the best benefits of breathwork is that it greatly boosts the immune system, such as lowering blood pressure, increasing energy levels and releasing toxins. There is a lot of scientific proof to back this up – a 2020 article by Dr Jeremy Montrose shows that irregular breathing can lead to a weakened immune system, allowing dust and other bacteria to enter our bodies. Additionally, according to Vital Heart & Vein, slow, controlled breathing can help lower your heart rate and enlarge your blood vessels. Moreover, breathwork can balance your pH levels, meaning that you will enjoy every advantage of alkaline blood. Finally, it can greatly elevate your mood and have an anti-inflammatory effect on your body.
As you can see, the myriad benefits from breathwork prove that you should start practising it right now. Whichever option you go for, you’re sure to reap them from day one!
If you’re looking for breathwork training done by professionals – one that is self-paced and tailored to complement your unique way of living, make sure to browse through our site!
