We're Terrible Breathers—4 Ways to Breathe Better Right Now
Image courtesy of Cassandra Hamer via Unsplash.
Breathing is one of our body’s core functions. It is both incredibly simple to do and infinitely complex in its variations. There are many, many breathing techniques that can serve a multitude of purposes—and in the current culture, breathwork is something we could all use a little more of. You can use it to calm your mind and body, diffuse panic attacks, increase your alertness, promote weight loss (it turns out that we actually lose weight as we exhale—more on that another time), achieve spiritual breakthroughs, and get hallucinogenic highs… all without the aid of drugs or supplements.
Why We’ve Gotten Bad at Breathing
But, it turns out, we’re actually terrible breathers. We’ve been getting worse at breathing as we evolve as a species. Our noses and mouths are shrinking, and we’re becoming ever more prone to airway impairments like asthma and allergies. This started as a way to accommodate more room for our brains as they increased in size, but has continued to the point of destroying our ability to breathe.
Don’t worry—that’s not as scary as it sounds. But breathing is incredibly important to our bodies. We can last years without conscious thoughts (coma), weeks without food, days without water, but only a few minutes without oxygen and blood flow. Breathing and heart function trump all other functions in the body. In fact, the brain and nervous system are geared to sacrifice any other set of functions to support heart and lung function. Powerful, right?
Control Your Breath, Control Your Life (Kinda)
What’s even more powerful is that we actually have control over our breath. While heart function is not under our direct conscious control, breathing can be. This makes it the perfect window into regulating our own physiologies. It’s one of the only bodily functions that connects the conscious and subconscious.
Because of that connection (and the mere biological fact that you’ll do it whether you’re thinking about it or not), learning how to be conscious of your breath and learning to control how and when you think about it can not only improve how you feel emotionally, but it can also positively impact your internal systems. The rhythmic movement of breathing helps with gastrointestinal processing, spinal disc health, heart rhythm, brain function, and much, much more.
4 Ways to Breathe Better Right Now
The good news is that you can train yourself to breathe better. And it’s not super complicated to start. Try these four tips right now to improve your normal breathing and create a healthier, calmer you.
Breathe through your nose: The nose is a perfectly designed air conditioning and filtration system. The inner structure of your nose has many mechanisms for filtering toxins and particles out of the inhaled air (hairs, mucus, lots of surface area), a curvy inner structure known as nasal concha (think conch shell), and sinuses designed to heat and humidify inhaled air before it enters your lungs. That means you’re getting better air quality when you utilize nose-breathing. Plus, it can help your body absorb up to 18% more oxygen than breathing through your mouth by increasing the nitric oxide your body produces—which increases circulation and oxygen delivery to your cells.
Breathe less (ironic, I know!): One effect that our shallow breathing has had is that it causes us to breathe faster. This puts the average human in a state of low-grade chronic hyperventilation, which, in the long term, can worsen many health conditions like gut disturbances, hypertension or heart disease, metabolic disorders, migraines, and many mental health disorders. It also decreases our oxygen absorption rate. Shoot for the ideal breathing rate when you’re at rest of five to six breaths per minute.
Breathe with your belly / unclench your abs: We Westerners have gotten in the habit of using our chests to breathe rather than our bellies. We idolize flat stomachs, and have therefore gotten out of the habit of letting our breath reach our bellies. We also wear tight clothing around our midsections (belts, tight pants, Spanx, etc.) and spend most of our time sitting, which prevents important movement of the abdomen and pelvic diaphragm during the breathing cycle. Next time you inhale, focus on letting the breath make its way into your (relaxed) abdomen. If you need help focusing, place your hand on your belly so you can feel it expand as you inhale, and relax as you exhale.
Think about your breath more often: Because we can continue to breathe when we’re not thinking about it, it’s incredibly easy to default back into poor breathing habits. And that can cause us to be triggered into shorter breaths that contribute to that chronic hyperventilation (again). Paying attention to your breath, even a few more times per day, can help soothe the nervous system and circumvent low-grade hyperventilation.
There’s so much more to breathing than we think about, and it’s a tool we easily have at our disposal to positively impact our health on a daily basis. Bookmark this post as a reminder for how you can breathe better (and feel better) every day.