Hello there today, let's explore the power of breath work in your healing journey. So you may or may not know, but I come from a strong background in yoga and meditation, and I'm a certified yoga therapist. And although this is the Well, this is somewhat the basis of why I bring breath work into healing and into my clients, my program.
but it's not just that really it's because breath is one of the quickest ways to regulate your nervous system and become present in the moment, but it's not often understood the effect of it and how powerful it can be. It can seem really simple, right? Like it's just breath. It's just inhaling and exhaling.
And. It's breath. I mean, it literally keeps us alive. We have to have breath to be okay and stable and regulated and grounded. So one of the quickest ways that I can express how important breath is, is when you've ever felt nervous or anxious more often than not, your breath is probably stuck up in the top of your chest, right below your throat.
And this is actually not where our breath is supposed to be expanding it. Well, it is, but, our breath comes from our lungs and our lungs are actually right underneath our ribs, right? A little bit below our chest. And so when we're really constricted with our breath. When we're in an anxious state, we're worried our breath is constricted to the top of our chest.
And instead, when we can allow our breath to expand our lungs, we actually get more oxygen to our bodies and our brains. So if you think about it this way, when we're constricting our breath and we're not getting enough breath in our body, we're literally not getting enough oxygen to our brains, which is huge, right?
It helps our body stay alive and, and operate the way that it needs to. So let's dive right in. I'm going to talk about the benefits of it, and then I'll probably lead you through a breathwork practice as well. So you can understand the effects. So breathwork is more than just inhaling and exhaling. It's a conscious practice of harnessing the breath to restore balance within the body and the mind.
It's about tapping into the innate wisdom of your nervous system. So your breath is intimately connected to your nervous system. It increases the oxygen in the brain and it increases oxygen throughout all of your body down to the base of your spine. Well, and to your toes, right? Your whole entire body.
So by altering your breath patterns, you can actually directly influence your body stress response. Now, Why is it important, especially when we're healing chronic symptoms? Well, because chronic conditions often leave us trapped in a cycle of tension and discomfort, right? It leaves us trapped in our nervous system stress response, which is the sympathetic.
Place of our nervous system, but through intentional breathing techniques, we can create space in our nervous system, help soothe it, which increases space for healing to occur. So I've talked about before the pain fear cycle or the symptom fear cycle. So whenever there's high fear, high anxiety, a lot of worry around whether that's literally something in our life, or that's actually something going on in our body or our brains that actually increases the stress response.
Yeah. Which increases more physical symptoms and pain. So if we can break that cycle, then we don't our brains and our bodies don't need to feel as many symptoms anymore. And 1 way to break that cycle is with breath. It's literally the 1st thing I always tell people to do, even before doing any kind of like brain training or body based practice is start with your breath.
Because breathwork acts as a bridge between the conscious and subconscious mind. It allows you to release stored emotions and physical tension that contributes to your pain and suffering, and it helps you tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself because oxygen is natural. Breathing is natural, right?
it's that exhale that we can feel. When maybe you were getting a little bit nervous. So for example, sometimes, I can start to talk fast and I can kind of mumble and talk over myself when I get nervous. And while being transparent here, if you actually go back to some of my earlier episodes, you'll hear that I've learned a lot throughout creating these, but I've really had to work on slowing down and when I can bring breath.
To my body, it actually helps me soothe and my nervous system. Slow down my speech, bring oxygen to my body and to my mind. And I can think a little bit more clearly. So that's just one little example that it can happen in any moment of your day. Breathwork practices have actually been studied extensively in various scientific fields, including psychology neuroscience medicine.
So I'm going to get a little scientific here with you because I really want you to understand the impact. We've been multiple studies, and I'm going to share a couple here with you today. So there's. Different bodies of research that suggests its potential benefits. So one study published in the American journal of physiology in 2002 showed the effects of slow, deep breathing on the autonomic tone, which the autonomic tone is particularly the parasympathetic activity.
And again, that parasympathetic is the relaxed place that we want you to get to and your nervous system, which I term, well, I didn't turn this, but Isabelle Tierney of the feel good life termed this the green zone and this study found that slow deep breathing increases that parasympathetic activity and actually decreases the sympathetic.
So it decreases that stress response, leading to a state of relaxed and reduced stress response. Another study found that breath control helped regulate emotions. So we know that stuck emotions can be stored and the amygdala of our brain. And so when the amygdala is on high alert, it usually means there's some suppressed or repressed emotions there.
And when we can use our breath to help soothe the body and soothe the nervous system, it's really helpful. Especially when we're experiencing hard emotions, difficult emotions, it can signal to our body that breath can signal to our brain. It's okay. We can feel this. It is safe to feel this. So this research was conducted at the Stanford university school of medicine and demonstrated that voluntary regulation of breathing can influence activity in the brain regions involved in emotional processing and attention.
So it's really showing that when we can use our breath. The part of our brain that lights up when we're in the stress response actually can soothe and calm. And it doesn't light up as much as when we're in that stress response. And breath is one of the first direct ways to do that. And we definitely know that breath work can help reduce stress.
We've learned that before, especially when this isn't always helpful, but if someone's ever told you, Oh, just calm down, take a breath. Right? That's not really the best way we want to hear it because usually when we're in the stress response, we are in defense mode, we're in protective mode. So hearing anything like that, someone telling us just calm down, just breathe probably isn't going to sit well.
But the reason why that's something that people say is because it's actually true. If you were actually to take a pause and breathe, it would help soothe you. Doesn't mean it's going to fix all your problems, but it does help. Okay. Last but not least for sure study that I want to share was on breathing exercises and pain management.
So studies have shown that breathwork techniques can be effective in managing pain. For example, Research published and the pain medicine in 2019 found that breath focused meditation reduced the pain intensity and unpleasantness in individuals with chronic pain. It was actually, shown pretty highly that this was able to work.
And so. Okay, I want to share that, but then I also want to talk about, okay, when should you use breath work and how so really when, honestly, the answer is pretty simple. anytime, anywhere, whether you're experiencing a flare up of symptoms or simply sinking a moment of peace amidst chaos, your breath is always there to guide you back to center.
And I'm actually going to share an example. Breath has been really me along my journey. And it doesn't, wasn't just coming from my yoga practice. I did learn about breath and yoga first and foremost, but I've seen a direct effect and my pain fear cycle using breath. So one, One of my symptoms, I have a very strong vasovagal response, which, which means that I'm always that person when I get blood taken or something like that, that I have a history of passing out or even when I'm just in hospital settings, I've gotten really nauseous.
And sometimes I've passed out and, honestly, many, many situations that involves like any kind of. Medical procedure, even if that isn't on me, even if I'm just watching it on a movie or something, I will, I get a pretty strong shutdown response. But one thing that's really, really helped me is my breath.
Because if you think about it, when someone gets nauseous and they get lightheaded and they end up passing out, usually it's because we're not getting enough blood flow to our bodies and our brains, which is. Also, we're not getting enough oxygen. And so that fear response get really restricted and decreases your breath and decreases your blood flow.
So one thing I have learned to help myself through these difficult situations is my breath. And I'm serious. And the, Oh, the incredible impact that it's had. So. I will sometimes like, for example, I fractured my wrist a few years ago and had a really difficult time with that because, well, one, that was a lot of pain and then just.
I dramatic experiences going to the doctors, and it's really difficult for me to go there for them to look at it and take x rays. And so I really had to lean on the power of breath. So 1 thing I would do before I would go into an appointment. Is I would sit in my car and I would breathe. For about 10 minutes before I walked in, I would breathe that.
I'm actually going to take you through that practice. But the reason I did this before was to help settle my nervous system, get me grounded and stable as much as possible. And then I would continue to establish safety in my body over and over. And then throughout the appointment, whenever I could, I would even close my eyes and I would just take deep inhales through my nose, Deep exhales through my mouth, and I'm talking five to six counts in and eight counts out.
So really slow, deep breaths. It's the way to help us get stable and connected to the core, to the root of our spine, into our bodies to feel that stability. And basically when you're doing this, you're reminding your body that you're safe. You're reminding your brain that you're safe. You're connected to yourself.
Instead of getting fearful about what could happen, what won't happen, what will happen, whatever that is, we're coming back to just the present on the breath, incorporating breath in this way, even in just a daily routine is super helpful. So more often than not, the 1st thing to help us get out of the stress response is to stop when we recognize we're in it breathe.
And then we move on to do some sort of skill or tool to help ourselves, but if we don't have that breath, it's doesn't really it's not always, but more often than not what we do following after that, whether that's an emotion regulation skill, whether that's journaling, whether that's talking to herself, whether that's processing with a therapist or someone else, if we don't have that breath 1st.
Then we're not coming from a stable place of our nervous system. So, okay, I'm going to go ahead and take you through a breath practice. And so if you're able to, I invite you to, you can sit or stand. I mean, you can even do this. You can do this in the car, as long as you don't close your eyes, anything that you could do it while you're walking, you can do it anywhere.
when I'm really trying to focus and when I'm feeling a lot of fear, I like to pause, sit down, even lay down and close my eyes and do this. But again, you can do this anywhere, anytime. That's the beauty and the power of breath. You can literally do it. No matter what could, because everyone breathes, right?
You can be sitting at dinner and just start breathing, but consciously breathing. I should say that it's conscious, slow and hails and exhales to help your body regulate. It's not just sitting there naturally breathing because sometimes most of the time when we're in the stress response, our natural breath is, not actually that helpful.
It's really constricted. It's up here in our chest and it's not down into our lungs. So let's take a pause for a moment and actually just start to notice what your breath feels like right now.
Notice when you inhale, where you feel that oxygen coming in to your body.
Where is it expanding? Is it expanding your chest on the inhale, your lungs, your abdomen?
When you exhale, see if you can make the exhales longer than the inhale. That is one of the keys to slowing down and regulating is always making the exhales longer. That's what helps soothe your mind and your body.
And once you start to just become aware of your natural breath pattern, we're going to do a practice. Where we're inhaling for four counts, we're holding at the top of the inhale for seven, and then we're exhaling for eight and I'll ask you to try it. But if you feel like you can't hold as long or exhale as long, that's completely okay.
I want you to just focus on deep inhales and always longer exhales. So on your next inhale, you're going to come with me. We're going to inhale for 1, 2, 3, 4, hold at the top 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and exhale through the mouth slowly for 3, 4, 5, 6. seven, eight. And again, inhale through your nose for four,
hold for seven
and exhale through the mouth slowly. Like you're blowing through a straw for eight.
We'll do that two more times. Inhale,
hold,
And exhale
one more time. Inhale,
hold,
and exhale through the mouth slowly.
And now just come back to your natural state of breathing. Notice what it feels like in your body. Notice where your mind is. Notice your muscles, how your body feels.
And remind yourself that you can do this at any time, anywhere, and I would encourage you to practice this often to help your body get more stable and knowing that this is automatic. Also, you can increase that, right? So I mentioned that I would do that for about 10 minutes, honestly, but that's when I was, you know, really, really needing some help, to help myself get regulated.
But again, you can use it anytime, anywhere for any length of time. And see what happens when you practice it consistently and regularly. So I've noticed for myself and people that I work with, when you do this, then it actually becomes automatic. So whenever I'm stressed or worried or anxious or in pain or, you know, going through anything difficult, I automatically go to breath.
Without even consciously thinking about it, I'll just usually exhale and then consciously breathe. Sometimes it's not 478. It's nothing crazy or fancy. It's purely just inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, making sure I'm filling up my lungs and my abdomen with my inhale. So, I encourage you to incorporate this breath work into your daily routine as a tool for self care and empowerment.
And whether it's through deep belly breathing, this four, seven, eight, or simply pausing to notice the rhythm of your breath. Each breath holds the potential to bring you closer to that relaxed state. And when we're talking about the relaxed state of your nervous system, we're actually really talking about getting more in tune with your inner self, your inner being.
The inner parts of you need that attention, and we can't give it attention. We can't learn more about ourselves until we slow down and get in tune and connected. Breath is the quickest way to help us find connection with ourselves. So remember that it's your greatest ally. Cultivate a relationship with your breath, with your body.
honor it and allow it to guide you towards healing and overall wellbeing. And if you have any questions about this, please reach out, let me know. you can DM me on Instagram. I also have a place on my webpage for the podcast where you can submit any questions. and I will answer them on here.
So I will talk to you next time.
