how to do deep breathing?

🌬️Introducing a few breathing exercises to your day can help you to:

🔸Reduce stress - increase calm
🔸Improve your focus
🔸Lower your blood pressure
🔸Lower your heart rate
🔸Improve core muscle stability
🔸Relieve pain
🔸Improve digestion
🔸Support correct posture
🔸Stimulate the lymphatic system - detoxify the body

🔎There has been a lot of research around the benefits of deep, controlled breathing, which involves filling the lungs to the max and goes by various names like belly or diaphragmatic breathing. Research shows that aiming for six to 10 deep breaths per minute has vast and complex physiological effects.

❇️Breathing just happens on an automatic basis and it is dictated by the autonomic nervous system, centered in the brain stem. Nerve cells there signal the diaphragm and other muscles to inspire and expire. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the inhale and the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the exhale. The parasympathetic nervous system decreases heart rate, blood pressure, and skeletal muscle tone, preparing the body for rest, sleep, or digestion. During exhalation, the vagus nerve (check my previous post to know more) secretes a transmitter substance (ACh) which causes deceleration within beat-to-beat intervals via the parasympathetic nervous system, producing a sense of calm.

​Check my post here ​

🌸Breathe in. Breathe out🌸

We do this all day, every day without a thought. Ask yourself "when was the last time you took a deep breath?" Probably not as frequently as you think. Did you know that deep breathing is one of our easiest, most convenient, and natural tools to manage stress and anxiety, reduce pain, high blood pressure, and even support digestion? In my next post I will show you how to breathe diaphragmatically.

🌻Deep breathing🌻

1. Get comfortable with your back straight
2. Place one hand on your belly
3. Count "one, two, three" seconds on the inhale
4. Breathe in through your nose . Let your belly full with air , then your chest and collar bones
5. Count "one, two" on the pause
6. Count "one, two, three, four" seconds on the exhale
7. Exhale using your stomach muscles to push out the last of the air
8. Count "one, two" on the pause
9. Repeat three more times

⚠️Warning: some people with experiences of trauma can feel deep breathing unsafe and get more anxious when doing it. Please check in with your therapist and listen to your body while trying a new strategy.

Check my visual post here