Focus on Exhale for a Deep Breath

Focus on Exhale

If you find yourself in a place where it's difficult to take a full breath because of thinking or stress, focus on releasing a nice, long exhale. As you get to the end of the exhale, softly push out a little more breath with the intercostal and abdominal muscles till your lungs feel fairly empty.

This creates a nice vacuum in the lungs that automatically sucks in more air and allows for a wonderful, full inhale into the lungs. Whenever I feel tightness in my chest and need to take a deep breath, I start with a long exhale and it makes a big difference.
Happy Breathing!

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The Gratefulness Breath

So you just got a little bit of good news. Or you saw the sun break through the rain clouds for a moment of bright light.  Or you saw someone who made you laugh.  

Take a deep breath to really feel that moment of happiness.  Start at the belly, exapand the ribs and fill your lungs all the way to the top of your chest - where your collarbone meets the arm.  Fill up with oxygen, fill up with thankfulness, and then exhale, let yourself relax into that feeling.  

Keep breathing it in, deeply and fully, until you're totally filled with this good thing.  

So some things are falling down, some things are really changing all around us, and new seeds are being planted for better ways.  And the same wonderful things that made us happy before are still there, abundantly.  Breathing them in will help us notice them more, appreciate them, till we see how full our lives are, how much we have.

Happy breathing!

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No Need to Hold Your Breath

Do you hold your breath when you feel stressed? Over the next couple days, notice if you do, and what's happening to cause it (a tough phone call, a certain project, etc.)   

Next, bring in the flow of the breath, keep your inhale and exhale moving as you deal with the issue.  This will help avoid the painful affects of holding patterns in your muscles and cells that occur when everything constricts due to stress, and shift your approach to one of more confidence and peace. Flow is the answer!

Also, notice how your posture is when dealing with a challenging moment. Most times we curl the shoulders in, hunch the back, protecting the insides (physically and emotionally), and hunker down to a small space, sort of hiding from the moment.

If you can bring awareness to your breath, AND straighten the back and pull the shoulder blades down towards your low back, you strike the pose of grace, strength, assurance, and the emotions follow suit. Eventually, the body will remember that you have a new protocol for dealing with challenges. Breath and grace, less fear.

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Breathe to Shift Your Mood

Great tip by Dr. Andrew Weil from his book Natural Health, Natural Medicine

"By simply putting your attention on breathing, without even doing anything to change it, you move in the direction of relaxation. There are many worse places to have your attention - on your thoughts for one, since thoughts are the source of much of our anxiety...Get in the habit of shifting your awareness to your breath whenever you find yourself dwelling on upsetting thoughts.
 

The single most effective relaxation technique I know is conscious regulation of breath.  I will teach you a yogic breathing exercise I give to most of my patients. It is utterly simple, takes almost no time, requires no equipment, and can be done anywhere.

Although you can do the exercise in any position, to learn it I suggest you do it seated with your back straight. Place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth, and keep it there through the entire exercise.  You will be exhaling through your mouth around your tongue; try pursing your lips slightly if this seems awkward.

First exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.  

Next close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

Next hold your breath for a count of seven.

Then exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

This is one breath.  Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths."

(It doesn't matter how many seconds this takes, just that you keep the ratio 4:7:8)

"This exercise is a natural tranquilizer for the nervous system...I would like you to do it at least twice a day.  You cannot do it too frequently.  Do not do more than four breaths at a time or the first month of practice. Later you can extend it to eight breaths."

Dr. Andrew Weil

the Relaxation Response

We've all heard of the fight or flight response.  We get stressed or scared and the heartbeat speeds up, blood pressure rises as arteries constrict, we breathe shallow, quick breaths, we start to sweat, adrenaline pumps, and we are ready to protect ourselves from danger. 

These days the "danger" is something like a meeting or a deadline.  The problem is that if we are continually stressed and eliciting this response, the body is working much harder than it needs to and we're burning energy like crazy, making us pretty tired at the end of the day.

The less famous counterpart to this is the relaxation response. If you're feeling calm and peaceful, you tend to breathe more deeply and slowly, the heart beat is slower, arteries open, blood pressure drops, and energy is burned at a slower pace, meaning we have more for the projects we want to get done when we're not burning it being nervous.

 You can elicit this response willfully by doing some deep breathing.  After 15 to 20 minutes of sitting quietly and focusing on the in and out of breath, studies have shown that the relaxation response takes effect and the body relaxes, more oxygen gets to the brain, and you can focus in a calm way. The more often you practice, the greater the effects.

 

There's a book - the Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson