Do me a favor. Focus on your breathing for a moment.
Breathe in for a count of four.
Hold it there for a count of four.
Slowly breathe out for a count of four.
Pause for a count of four.
Do that 3 times.
How do you feel? This technique is called square breathing and it’s one of the first types of breath work I was taught in order to calm my anxiety.
Breathing isn’t something I ever considered to be a skill until I started my journey towards healing! I mean, it’s not like optimal breathing is something they teach in schools. At least, they didn’t when I was growing up. Most of us think of breathing as a physiological function that our body does automatically in order to keep us alive. On average, a resting human takes 23,040 breaths a day, and we don’t have to think about it because the medulla oblongata – a part of the brainstem – triggers us to inhale.
But breathing is about so much more than just feeding us oxygen. It’s actually the one thing that can bring our mind and body back into alignment when they are out of sync.
Jay Shetty is one of my favorite speakers and a huge advocate for breath work. In one of his most recent podcast episodes, he dives into the topic of breathing and says that more often than not, we find that our mind is ahead of our body, or our body is ahead of our mind. A perfect example of this is when we experience anxiety. When you have anxiety, your mind can be moving at 100 miles a minute while your body is frozen in time, barely moving, barely breathing. This happens to me whenever I have a phobia attack. On the outside I may appear fine, but what’s really happening is my mind is running a hundred miles a minute, freaking out about all the bad things that could happen, and my breathing comes to almost a complete stop. It’s fast, shallow and often quite painful.
Breath work can both free the body from the grips of anxiety and bring the mind back to the present moment, creating synergy and an alignment of your spirit. Having this quick tool at your disposal means that you can immediately change the state of your body, and therefore the state of your mind – which is pure magic for anyone suffering from a mental health condition. This is the one practice that I carry with me in every aspect of my mental health healing and advocacy. In therapy, in meditation, in my Oh Shit Kit, whenever I have a panic attack. You don’t need anything except yourself and a few minutes.
So where do you start with breath work? Here are my 3 favorites.
Exhale > Inhale Breaths
Number one rule: take deep breaths where your exhales are longer than your inhales. Over the last couple of weeks, my partner and I have been doing guided meditations and the guide directs us to take a few of these breaths at the beginning of almost every session.
As Jay Shetty explains, every emotion is connected to your breath, so when you breathe out for longer than you breathe in, your body naturally relaxes. Check out his one-minute video on this here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=648949535889913
Alternate Nostril Breathing
I know I have spoken about this technique so many times before, but it just never gets old. It has so many benefits, including soothing the nervous system and curing headaches, and it is soothingly meditative in making you concentrate on the technique. I do it when I’m traveling or whenever I experience a panic attack.
Plug one side of your nose.
Breathe in through the open nostril.
Hold it at the top and switch to plug your other nostril.
Then breathe out of the unplugged nostril.
Breathe in through the nostril you just breathed out of.
Hold it at the top and switch to plug your other nostril.
Then breathe out of the unplugged nostril.
Breathe in through the nostril you just breathed out of.
For a visual tutorial, I recommend Yoga with Adriene who explains it perfectly!
https://yogawithadriene.com/alternate-nostril-breathing/
Square breathing.
Breathe in for a count of four.
Hold it there for a count of four.
Slowly breathe out for a count of four.
Pause for a count of four.
Do that 3 times.
How have breathing techniques helped you? Where and how do you use them? Tell me in the comments below!
