Just Breathe
BY BRIDGET KILPATRICK
We can all breathe more! Living in a world full of stress and long to-do lists, everyone can benefit from deep breathing. Ninety percent of all doctor visits are stress-related. Breathing is the simplest activity you can add to your life to improve your health.
How Do You Breathe?
Many of you may not even realize how you are breathing. Take a moment and breathe. Is your belly filling up or your chest? The majority of us breathe in our chest, with short shallow breaths. No wonder we all have tension in our chest, shoulders up to our ears, feel anxiety, or have digestive issues!
Fight or Flight vs. Rest and Digest?
The lack of deep breathing keeps us in a state of fight or flight activating only our sympathetic nervous system and increasing our cortisol levels. Deep breaths allow us to relax and activate our rest and digest system or the parasympathetic nervous system. Not only will you immediately feel more relaxed after a few deep breaths, so will your digestive system. It's getting a much-needed massage!
Three Helpful Practices for Deep Breathing
When you feel reactive, overwhelmed, upset, anxious, or can’t focus... here are a few breathing techniques I like to share with my clients:
1. 4-7-8 Technique- Breathe in for 4, hold for 7 and breathe out for 8. Do it four times in a row (4 total breaths), twice a day or whenever feeling stressed. You will immediately feel lighter and focused.
2. S.T.O.P. Stop; Take a deep Breath; Observe what’s going on, why I am feeling this way; then Proceed. Before you do or say something you regret; use this method (I also like to quickly pray before I proceed). I bet you will make a better decision.
3. Breathe app on your apple watch or any breathe app on your smart device. Don’t turn it off! When it says “Breathe”, breathe ;)
I especially love to use S.T.O.P. when I know I’m on the verge of saying something I may regret!
Yoga
Yoga is my absolute favorite practice of deep breathing and yoga. From personal experience, one session a week can do wonders for your overall well-being and mental health. Take a class on Monday and experience a week of calmness and productivity. It’s an incredibly healing practice to support chronic diseases especially dementia. The Kirtan Kriya (Saa Taa Naa Maa) meditation is recommended by Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation. This practice is done in 12 minutes and shown to reduce stress and increase activity key to memory function. I love to do it while I’m in the sauna and feeling completely overwhelmed, a sense of calmness comes over me.
Schedule Breathing into Your Day
I know this may sound silly, but if you put it in your calendar or set a reminder, you will breathe more. Schedule as little as a minute of deep breathing a day and feel immediate results from a few deep breaths. Everyone around you will benefit from it too!
We all live very full scheduled lives, but we all have time for a few deep breaths. Make it happen!
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