In this post I will shed some light on the importance of breathing and why it’s about more than just getting oxygen into our bodies.
Let’s look a little deeper, shall we? The most important muscle in breathing is the diaphragm.
We also have other muscles that work to help us breath.
Could you feel all of the muscles working when you did your exercise? Next time you do the exercise try to feel them.
Breathing is pumping We know that when your diaphragm contracts, it moves down toward your pelvic floor.
You can go back thousands of years and study practices like yoga, tai chi, qi gong, many forms of martial arts and one of the few consistencies all these practices have in common is very precise breathing structures.
All of the Masters understood that there was a benefit to breathing in through your nose.
Alone this study is amazing, but doesn’t directly connect to breathing.
These findings led to an experiment that discovered that blood is oxygenated 10-15% more, when you breathe through the nose compared to breathing through your mouth.
Don’t you just love when science finally catches up with what we know intuitively! The Vagus Nerve The nervous system… The most complex system humans know of in the universe.
One branch is the parasympathetic nervous system or “Rest and Digest” I’ll just call it your rest system, and the other is the sympathetic nervous system or “Fight or flight” I’ll call this your survival system.
The good news is there are a couple of simple yet effective breathing exercises you can do to stimulate and turn on your rest system, you preformed one of them earlier.
To summarize, belly breathing through your nose stimulates your vagus nerves, which trigger the “Rest and digest” portion of your autonomic nervous system.
Exercise 2: The 1:4:2 Get into the same position as the first exercise.
Now hold your breath for 12 – Now exhale counting to 6 – Don’t force the air out at the bottom, just let it flow out.
Repeat for 1 to 2 mins But wait!? After I spent all this time telling you to breathe, now I’m saying to hold your breath? Yes! And here is why.
Holding your breath the right way I stumbled upon the benefits of breath holding while learning to free-dive, because I love spearfishing.
He is THE authority on breath holding on this planet I would write his accomplishments out, but honestly seeing is believing in this case.
All of this information is to show you how breathing properly really can start you on the path to a healthier life.
If you are ready to dive head first than do some research on Pranayama, the practice of controlling the breath.
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