Homepage the business of yoga newsroom

How do you breathe?

Announcement posted by the business of yoga 23 May 2016

How many Breaths do you take per minute?

Do you know how to breathe?

Can you Breathe properly? Western research is finally proving what us yogis have known all along. That Breathwork can deliver powerful mind and body benefits. Prehaps everyone should be taught how to take better advantage of it both in practice and in life? When you breathe your body breathes automatically—so why worry about how to inhale and exhale when you could be doing something far more important! For one thing, breath control, or pranayama, is one of the most powerful Yogic practices. For another, scientific research is now showing that mindful breathing—paying attention to how you breathe and learning how to manipulate it—is one of the most effective ways to lower everyday stress levels and improve a variety of health factors ranging from mood to metabolism. Pranayama is at once a physical-health practice, mental-health practice, and meditation. It is not just breath training; it’s mind training that uses the breath as a vehicle. Pranayama makes your entire life better. Despite the inherently automatic nature of breathing, most people have a lot to learn and improve upon when it comes to the most basic of our physiological functions, breathing. The average person breathes from 14 to 20 breaths per minute, which is about three times faster than the 5 or 6 breaths per minute proven to help you feel your best, says Patricia Gerbarg, MD, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College and co-author of The Healing Power of the Breath.  “There is a very direct relationship between breath rate, mood state, and autonomic nervous system state,” says Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies yoga and meditation. The autonomic nervous system governs the body’s sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-restore) responses, dialing functions like heart rate, respiration, and digestion up or down as necessary in response to potential threats. Evolutionarily, this worked as a survival mechanism, but today’s nonstop barrage of smartphone pings, emails, and news updates also trips the body’s alarms—and often. We know that breath changes in response to emotion. So when a person gets panicky and anxious, their breath becomes shallow and rapid. And we now know from a number of really good studies that actively changing the breath rate can actually change autonomic function and mood state, therefore helping to change the emotion Here’s how researchers think it works: With each breath, millions of sensory receptors in the respiratory system send signals via the vagus nerve to the brainstem. Fast breathing pings the brain at a higher rate, triggering it to activate the sympathetic nervous system, turning up stress hormones, heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, sweat production, and anxiety. On the other hand, slowing your breathing induces the parasympathetic response, dialing down all of the above as it turns up relaxation, calm, and mental clarity.  Are you ready to tap into the power of pranayama? 

The Business of Yoga can help teach you how to breathe www.businessofyoga.com.au  AND we come to your workplace.