Here’s something we all know instinctually – breathing is important for survival. Your brain and blood cells must receive oxygen in order for you to live. One of the most crucial basic health habits to enhance your body’s functionality and general health is proper breathing, which maximizes the benefits of every breath.
While oxygen is necessary for every cell in your body to survive and operate, efficient breathing also accomplishes another task. It facilitates entry into and maintenance of the parasympathetic nervous system in the body. We should spend the majority of our life in this area of the neurological system, which is a condition of rest and digesting. When we are peaceful, relaxed, and functioning on a regular basis, it governs processes that take place in the organs.
Here, we’ll look at breathing techniques that go beyond merely providing your body with the oxygen it needs to survive, such as breathing deliberately to provide your body with the nutrients it need to enhance your general health and wellbeing.
The Importance of Breathing
These days, the majority of people experience chronic high levels of stress. Such worry keeps the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight/freeze) active in the body. It is centered on surviving, which includes automatic reactions to risky or scary circumstances that fill the body with hormones and quicken the heartbeat and breathing. When the body is in this condition for a prolonged period of time, it grows so used to them that they become part of its regular daily routine.
This dysregulated normal must eventually have a long-term impact. Up to 90% of all illnesses and diseases are attributed to stress, according to the national aging and safety database and Clemson University. It is also not difficult to deduce that you live longer when your body’s cells have the oxygen they require to function at their best. And who wouldn’t want to live longer!
Breathing Patterns
Your breathing has patterns, whether you’re aware of them or not. The fight, flight, and freeze cycle is perpetuated by the majority of those patterns, which are caught in dysfunctional patterns.
When you breathe in via your nose, you’re supporting and promoting your body’s parasympathetic mode of functioning. The diaphragm, located deep within the abdomen, receives two thirds of the breath. In fact, you ought to watch the belly enlarge. With a slight amount of chest extension, the final third of the breath should enter the lungs.
The majority of people reading this are currently breathing sympathetically, which involves taking in air through the mouth, letting it almost entirely enter the chest, which effectively causes it to rise, but with little to no air reaching the diaphragm and little belly expansion. In essence, this is just breathing to survive.
How to Modify Your Breathing Pattern
A quick, easy technique to assist your body in transitioning from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system activity is to become aware of your breathing patterns and then actively attempt to change them. It’s actually free. Just a little practice will do.
To accomplish this, seal your lips and mouth and take a four-second count of gentle inhalation via your nostrils. Hold your breath for four seconds after pausing at the top of your inhalation. Spend four seconds breathing out through your nose. Hold your breath for four seconds while you pause at the bottom of your exhalation. Complete 10 rounds of this technique by repeating it.
To be able to notice and comprehend what you are doing, it is frequently best to first do this in a calm setting. You will realize you can do this anyplace as you advance and consistently practice. You’ll start to notice your body adapting to this technique as your new default breathing pattern as you go along. This is the aim!
Chiropractic Can Help
By removing any structural hindrance from the spine, chiropractic adjustments help to promote nervous system communication. There are specific spinal changes that can be made that have an impact on the parasympathetic nerves. Chiropractic therapy is a smart decision if you want to help your body heal itself and retrain it to work at its optimum when it is resting and digesting.
It takes more than just breathing for survival. A good choice is to make sure that the majority of your daily breathing patterns support the parasympathetic nervous system. It is free and doesn’t take very long. But it does require consistent work.
Change the way you breathe to start enhancing your health right away. Book an appointment online today with Dr. Jason Mubarak, DC.
