Exercises
Exercises
Diaphragm Breathing
Learn how to breathe from the diaphragm
It might seem strange that people need to learn how to breathe, or need breathing exercises, or even that there is a right way and a wrong way to breathe, but it is true. Proper breathing is a very important part of staying healthy. Many people do not breathe correctly, particularly people who are anxious or who sometimes get panic attacks. We all start out as babies knowing how to breathe, but as we grow up various things affect us and during emotional events our pattern of breathing can alter. The emotion passes, but sometimes the faulty breathing method remains. We then have to use breathing exercises to relearn how to breathe from the diaphragm.
Fortunately poor breathing technique is easy to test and it is easy to correct your breathing. Simple breathing exercises will show you the way to better breathing and how to calm anxiety. This page will show you the correct way to breathe with the diaphragm.
Deep Breathing Exercise
Incorrect breathing is associated with several health problems. Breathing does more than just move air in and out of your lungs. When the diaphragm muscle moves your chest up and down it actually performs other important functions. The main arteries go through the center of the diaphragm, and so does the digestive tract and the lymph system. When the diaphragm is moving it also massages the digestive system and pumps the lymph system. Under-exercising the diaphragm risks problems with these essential systems.
Few people know much about the lymph circulation, but is almost as extensive as the blood circulation and is an essential component of your immune system. A weak immune system leaves you open to frequent infections.
Some people do short, shallow breathing by pulling up their chest and letting it go. This is called Thoracic breathing. This is inefficient because prevents the air reaching the whole of the lung and leads to poor gas exchange. If the diaphragm does not move up and down properly it can cause digestive problems and increase susceptibility to minor infections.
How to breathe using the diaphragm
The correct way to breathe is Diaphragmatic Breathing. This involves pushing the
stomach out when breathing, or more accurately, raising the diaphragm when breathing. Everyone should know how to breathe from the diaphragm.
Diaphragmatic breathing maintains the optimum pH level in the bloodstream.
When someone breathes thoracically, it affects their ph levels, (the acid/alkali balance in the bloodstream) and their blood becomes more acidic. This triggers a stress response by causing the pituitary gland to secrete stress hormones into the
bloodstream. Constant stress can lead to health problems.
The opposite, Hyperventilation (over rapid breathing) causes the pH to turn alkali which can bring on panic attacks. This is the reason why getting someone in panic to rebreathe into a paper bag works. It increases the level of carbon dioxide in the lungs and reverses the pH imbalance caused by over breathing. So breathing can have a direct effect on your health. Relaxing with breathing exercises and learning how to breathe from the diaphragm can reduce stress and anxiety. Learning deep breathing exercises is a good way to learn to prevent panic attacks.
Diaphragm breathing test
To test whether you are breathing properly, here's what to do. Sit or lie down somewhere. You will see the effect more clearly if you are lying down. Put one hand on your upper chest and your other hand on your abdomen, just above your belly button. Allow your breathing to normalize for a minute or two, and then notice which hand is moving. The correct way to breathe is by moving your diaphragm, which means the hand on your abdomen should be moving up and down as you breathe, but the hand on the chest should be steady. If you find that the hand on your chest is the one doing the moving, then you are breathing wrongly, and you need to relearn how to breathe from the diaphragm. If you are sitting down, to test if you are diaphragm breathing, put both hands flat on your stomach, one on each side of your bellybutton, with the tips of the longest fingers just touching. When you breathe you should see a small gap appear between the finger tips. if not you are probably breathing at the top of your chest.
Learn how to breathe correctly
Learning better breathing is simple. Keep your hand on your abdomen and when you breathe in, make the abdomen rise. It may take a few practices to find the right muscles to do this, but you will know when you have it right because it will feel very natural. You will find that the abdomen rises and falls but the upper chest stays still. You might find it useful to put a cushion or a book on your abdomen so that you can see the rise and fall clearly.
Once you have experienced the correct pattern of breathing and maintained it for a while, all you have to do is to check a few times during the day when you are sitting down, and at night when you are lying in bed. Just put your hands in place and check that they are moving correctly. After a day or two the change will be permanent and you can forget about it. Correct diaphragm breathing will be maintained automatically by this breathing exercise.
How to breathe
Next time you are in a place where you can observe other people, look carefully and you may be surprised to notice how many are chest breathing instead of diaphragm breathing. The right way to breathe is in through the nose and out through the nose when you are at rest, and in through the mouth and out through the mouth when you are doing strenuous activity. Some relaxation and meditation breathing techniques talk about circular breathing, in through the nose and out through the mouth, but there is no evidence to support this idea. It is simply a way of making you focus your attention on your breathing: by doing that you stop focusing on other things such as intrusive thoughts.
Breathing Relaxation
As well as being important for everyday health, correct breathing is important for self hypnosis. Just sitting quietly and using the diaphragmatic breathing exercise will put most people into trance. The breathing technique of taking a deep breath and releasing it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system which causes the body to relax and release tension. When you go into hypnosis or self hypnosis you will notice that a series of deep breaths can start you going into trance, but once in trance most of the time you will be shallow breathing, almost imperceptible, and entirely done at the top of the chest. By monitoring your breathing patterns you know when you are working in the right areas. Whenever you think about some topic that affects your subconscious mind, or when the hypnotist mentions something that touches on a deep concern, you will involuntarily take a deep breath, almost like a sigh but without the sound.
BREATHING MEDITATION
Breathing is an essential part of meditation. In fact most meditation exercises consist of just breathing and suggesting that your mind is free to wander. Just paying attention to your breathing and saying silently to yourself "More and more relaxed....' on the in-breath and 'deeper and deeper" on every out-breath is a very effective way of going into trance.
Another simple method is to focus on your breathing, and when your breathing has settled down, (very often when you focus on your breathing your breathing rate will speed up for a short time), close your eyes and say the same word softly with each breath out. The word doesn't matter, it can be anything. Try using 'one', or 'calm' or 'relax' or any other simple word. Using this breathing method you will go into a gentle meditation for as long as you continue the breathing exercise. This breathing technique is an easy way of relaxing and reducing stress and anxiety and you can easily combine it with learning to breathe from the diaphragm.