Breathing Exercises

Around 70% of your body’s toxins are released through our breath. Carbon dioxide is a natural waste product of your body’s metabolism. The benefits of breathing deeply help the systems in the body to process this more efficiently. Breathing exercises also release endorphins throughout the body.  Endorphins interact with opiate receptors in the brain to reduce our perception of pain.  The upward and downward movement of the diaphragm helps remove toxins from organs, promoting improved blood flow. It increases the production of oxygen levels and in turn, rising levels of energy. Overall, breathing exercises reduce stress, blood pressure, anxiety. They promote focus, release toxins, and self-awareness. Breathing exercises also benefit you by helping you feel more confident and able to let go of old belief systems as well as negative thought patterns that no longer serve you. As discussed earlier, letting go of old stories previously held onto on a subconscious level gives you new emotional depth and positive perspective. And breathing exercises do this by clearing the mind, slowing down our thoughts, stabilizing the flow of oxygen in the brain, and stimulating the release of feel-good hormones.

Breathing is part of your autonomic nervous system (ANS). ANS is a system responsible for essential bodily processes that you don’t need to put any thought into, such as digestive processes, how quickly you breathe, the metabolic process that affect your weight, overall body temperature, and blood pressure. Most of ANS functions are involuntary and some you can control by doing deep breathing exercises. Taking deep breaths can help you voluntarily regulate your ANS, which can have many benefits — especially by lowering your heart rate, controlling blood pressure, and helping you relax, all of which help decrease how much of the stress hormone cortisol is released into your body.

Most of us are not using our whole respiratory system to breathe. Studies show that many of us use only 33%, a mere third of our total capacity.  Fascinating studies on breathing show that your breathing pattern reveals a lot about your behavior, health, past, and current flow of life. Studies explain that everyone’s breathing has a story that encompasses birth trauma, early childhood experiences, parental authority, school peers, and angst from our teenage years and early adulthood. Some of us are chest breathers while others are belly breathers. Then there are those who breathe more in the midsection. By opening and clearing the restricted breathing pattern, not only are you allowing the body’s natural healing to take place, but also transform your mindset and attitude.