Relaxation Techniques: The Simple Power of Breath

By Nancy Hausauer

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Breathing and relaxation techniques can have huge long-term benefits for your health--physical, mental, emotional, and energetic. They also make you feel better right now by relieving the misery of anxiety and stress.

Breathing for relaxation—a kind of “breathwork”--is effective and simple to learn, and you can do it any time, anywhere.

Deep breathing (also called diaphragmatic breathing) works on a physiological level to help “turn off” your stress response (“fight or flight” mode) and activate your parasympathetic nervous system (“rest and digest” mode). This helps you to relax--with profound benefits for your health.

How to Breathe for Relaxation
Here is a breathing and relaxation technique that will allow you to turn off your stress response and relax deeply:

• Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth.
• Gently inhale all the way down into the lower third of your lungs. Your belly should rise when you inhale and fall when you exhale.
• Gently slow your breathing down and even the rhythm of your breathing out. (You can count the duration of each breath to help keep the rhythm even.)
• After your breathing has evened out, slow down the out-breath (in comparison to the in-breath). Breathe in for a certain number of counts—whatever is comfortable for you--then breathe out for up to twice as many counts. Do this for at least one minute, and up to five minutes.
• If you start to feel dizzy or faint, just go back to normal breathing for a while.

Breathing exercises can make you feel light-headed, so don’t do this while driving.

How Breathing and Relaxation Techniques Benefit Your Health
Relaxation and stress are governed largely by your nervous and endocrine systems. Your body’s autonomic nervous system is made up of two related systems: the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system.

”Rest and Digest” Mode
The parasympathetic nervous system is related to relaxation, creativity, awareness, and normal body processes such as digestion (which is why it’s sometimes called the “rest and digest” mode). When your parasympathetic nervous system is activated, your body is able to carry out the functions it needs to maintain and restore itself. Thus activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is very good for your health.

”Fight or Flight” Mode
The sympathetic nervous system, in contrast, is activated when we are in danger or under stress. Our sympathetic nervous system puts us into “fight or flight” mode, gearing up our minds, bodies and emotions for dealing with a real or imaginary enemy. As our body is readied to respond to a challenge, our heart pounds, blood pressure goes up, breathing gets shallow, the adrenal glands pump out stress hormones, immune function is suppressed, and any body function that is not absolutely necessary for fighting or running away is suppressed.

Effects of Long-Term Stress
While this fight or flight mode is necessary for our survival when we are in dangerous circumstances or need to react to something quickly, it has major health consequences if we get stuck in it—and many of us do.

Prolonged stress can make you vulnerable to illness. It also accelerates aging. Over time the stress response can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, ulcers, autoimmune diseases, cancer, anxiety, insomnia and depression.

Fortunately, as we have seen, you can use breathing and relaxation techniques to relax and relieve stress any time, anywhere.

(c) Copyright -- Nancy Hausauer. All rights reserved worldwide.