Contents
Smooth or intermittent, deep or superficial, it reflects our emotional state. Learning to control your breathing is an effective way to keep stress under control. And really feel better.
What could be more natural? Without thinking, we inhale and exhale several thousand times a day. But under the influence of our emotions, the rhythm and depth of breathing is constantly changing. In tense expectation, we freeze, “breathless” from excitement or fear. Sometimes, “breath intercepts” from an excess of feelings. And daily chores sometimes just “do not give a breath.” Emotions govern our breathing, that’s a fact. But the opposite is also true: by gaining control over our breath, we can influence our emotional state.
From life
Young children breathe with their belly: it rises on inhalation and falls on exhalation – with a large amplitude and a constant frequency. An adult person breathes like this only when he is relaxed or fast asleep. At the slightest sign of stress or pain, breathing immediately changes, becomes intermittent, superficial, frequent … And now we breathe not with the stomach, but with the chest (which reduces the respiratory capacity by a factor of three), we breathe “vice versa” (pulling in the stomach when inhaling and releasing it when exhale). What to do to breathe again in full force?
By all lungs
We breathe at a rate of ten to fifteen breaths per minute: when we inhale, the diaphragm contracts, lowers, and the chest expands. The increase in lung volume creates a reduced pressure in them, which allows air to enter the lungs and fill two hundred million lung alveoli. “The volume of air inhaled by an adult per day averages 15-25 thousand liters. And all this air is cleaned, warmed and neutralized,” says Irina Lunichkina, pulmonologist, head of the Asthma-Service Asthma Center. – The main function in the process of breathing is performed by the bronchi, a system of branching tubules.
Imagine a tree turned upside down. Between the bronchial (air-conducting) and alveolar (gas exchange) zones there is a transition zone: air, passing through small branches that form a porous tissue that plays the role of a kind of filter, is warmed up and cleaned of dust, soot, microbes and other particles that are deposited in the lumen of the bronchi and bronchioles. Through the blood vessels-capillaries, gas exchange occurs: blood enriched with oxygen is discharged through the arteries from the lungs to other organs, and blood containing carbon dioxide is delivered through the veins to the lungs. When exhaling, the diaphragm rises, the alveoli are released from carbon dioxide, the chest decreases in volume, air is forced into the trachea. The involuntary respiratory reflex is triggered by an increase in carbon dioxide in the blood. But, unlike blood circulation, we can control breathing through the will.
Read more:
- Deep breathing helps you relax
breath of life
For the people of the East, breathing is not just the supply of the necessary oxygen to the body. As the qigong theory says, “The forces of Heaven penetrate our body and go to the Earth, then the forces of the Earth go to Heaven – that’s what inhaling and exhaling is.” The process of breathing, therefore, is an energy exchange with the Universe – the vital energy qi, or prana, penetrates into our being, and then returns outside. “On a physical level, breathing allows our body to get rid of toxins,” explains Elena Ulmasbayeva, head of the Yoga Practica network of yoga centers. – But an equally important process takes place on an emotional level: a full exhalation relieves us of “emotional toxins” (from accumulated irritation to unconscious stress caused by an excess of negative information around, in TV news, in the press).
Inhalation serves as a metaphor for consumption – a modern person tends to breathe “greedily”, often and quickly. It is important not only to “consume”, but also to get rid of the unnecessary, therefore, in yoga practice, we pay a lot of attention to exhalation, lengthening it, striving to make it fuller, of better quality.”
Try this simple exercise: After focusing on your breath for five minutes, inhale for four counts and exhale for seven counts (one “count” is about one second). Having mastered it, you can move on to a more complex option: inhale for four counts; holding your breath for four counts; exhale for seven counts. This exercise helps to relieve emotional overexcitation.
Spirit of Yoga
Yoga is indeed the most accessible method to learn how to control your breathing and gain control over stress. In addition, many modern psychotherapeutic directions (for example, gestalt or body-oriented therapy) use breathing as a very effective tool to heal various mental traumas.
Proper breathing can also help reduce physical pain by directing exhalation to the part of the body that hurts through visualization. “It is enough to imagine as if your nostrils are in this place,” explains yoga teacher Natalya Shuvalova. “By exhaling air, for example, into an aching lower back or neck, you can completely relieve tension from the spine and significantly relieve pain.”
natural rhythm
“When I think about how to breathe while running, my breathing loses its naturalness and because of this, the movement loses its rhythm, slows down,” says 40-year-old athletics coach Irina. “This really often happens,” confirms Natalia Shuvalova. – Despite the fact that breathing is given special importance in yoga, we avoid talking about it constantly. Because, one has only to say “take a breath” or “exhale”, the natural rhythm of breathing goes astray. It becomes subject to the will, consciousness, which forces you to think about how to breathe correctly. Therefore, it is better to influence breathing not through direct control, but by relieving tension (for example, in the chest), which interfere with full and natural breathing.
How do you do it?
To make the process of breathing more conscious means to learn to be aware of what is happening with our body. A little exercise will help you understand this in detail.
- Lie on your back or sit comfortably. Breathe normally. Close your eyes and focus.
- Pay attention to how you breathe – through your mouth or nose.
- Count how many counts your normal inhale lasts and how long your exhale.
- Put one hand on your chest, the other on your stomach – which moves more intensively when breathing?
- Put both hands on the ribs and try to understand how they move in the process of breathing – forward, up, to the sides, move apart like a fan?
- Concentrate and raise and lower your stomach to the limit with the help of breathing – count how long your inhalation and exhalation lasts.
L.Z.
“For our soul to sing”
“Every day we spend at least 15 minutes working on our breath before we start singing,” says vocal teacher and jazz singer Tais Urumidis.
“Even the masters of the Italian school of vocals developed a number of exercises aimed at staging and consolidating singing breathing. Unlike normal breathing (thoracic), it is deeper and is carried out by controlling the diaphragm. The vocalist’s breathing is similar to the breathing of yogis who breathe through the stomach: you can imagine inside you a tall vessel with a narrow neck that starts from the larynx and descends to the abdominal cavity. Taking a short breath through the nose, a person “stretches” it to the very stomach, as if filling this vessel. The ability for this type of breathing is inherent in us by nature, it is very natural. The advantages of such “developed” breathing are obvious: the brain is better supplied with oxygen, all its functions are activated. Proper breathing allows not only to sing well, but also to look and feel better. If you train it gradually and systematically, it is brought to automatism and becomes absolutely natural, both for vocals and for ordinary speech.
Recorded by Julia Varshavskaya