By expanding the lung’s air pockets and improving the flow of blood and lymph, abdominal breathing also helps prevent infection of the lung and other tissues. Like blood, the flow of lymph, which is rich in immune cells, is also improved. This leads to improved stamina in both disease and athletic activity. The negative pressure also pulls blood into the chest improving the venous return to the heart. This causes a negative pressure within the chest forcing air into the lungs. When it contracts it is forced downward causing the abdomen to expand. The diaphragm is a large muscle located between the chest and the abdomen. Note: Using and learning proper breathing techniques is one of the most beneficial things that can be done for both short and long term physical and emotional health.Ībdominal breathing is also known as diaphragmatic breathing. With regular practice you will breathe from the abdomen most of the time, even while asleep. The good news is that similar to learning to play an instrument or riding a bike, you can train the body to improve its breathing technique. Rapid, shallow, chest breathing results in less oxygen transfer to the blood and subsequent poor delivery of nutrients to the tissues. If your left hand rises more, you are an abdomen breather.Ĭhest breathing is inefficient because the greatest amount of blood flow occurs in the lower lobes of the lungs, areas that have limited air expansion in chest breathers. If your right hand rises more, you are a chest breather. As you breathe, see which hand rises more. You can see if you are a chest breather by placing your right hand on your chest and your left hand on your abdomen. Due to rapid more shallow breathing, the chest does not expand as much as it would with slower deeper breaths and much of the air exchange occurs at the top of the lung tissue towards the head. Chronic stress can lead to a restriction of the connective and muscular tissue in the chest resulting in a decrease range of motion of the chest wall. The breathing process can be trainedīreathing can be trained for both positive and negative influences on health. We can see how our bodies know to do this naturally when we take a deep breath or sigh when a stress is relieved. The breath can be used to directly influence these stressful changes causing a direct stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system resulting in relaxation and a reversal of the changes seen with the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system.

Consciously slowing our heart rate, decreasing perspiration and relaxing muscles is more difficult than simply slowing and deepening breathing. If this process happens over a long period of time, the sympathic nervous system becomes over stimulated leading to an imbalance that can effect our physical health resulting in inflammation, high blood pressure and muscle pain to name a few. Our heart rate rises, we perspire, our muscles tense and our breathing becomes rapid and shallow. An example of how life effects physiologyĭuring times of emotional stress our sympathetic nervous system is stimulated and effects a number of physical responses. Breathing exercises can act as a bridge into those functions of the body of which we generally do not have conscious control.

It uses breathing techniques to change subtle energies within the body for health and well being. Pranayama is a yoga practice that literally means the control of life or energy. We can consciously use breathing to influence the involuntary (sympathetic nervous system) that regulates blood pressure, heart rate, circulation, digestion and many other bodily functions.

It is the only bodily function that we do both voluntarily and involuntarily. Unlike other bodily functions, the breath is easily used to communicate between these systems, which gives us an excellent tool to help facilitate positive change. In yoga, the breath is known as prana or a universal energy that can be used to find a balance between the body-mind, the conscoius-unconscoius, and the sympathetic-parasympathetic nervous system. A rhythmic process of expansion and contraction, breathing is one example of the consistent polarity we see in nature such as night and day, wake and sleep, seasonal growth and decay and ultimately life and death. It is thought by many cultures that the process of breathing is the essence of being.

Amsn deep breathing