BREATHING FOR WELL-BEING

A human being can live without food for about 30 days and without water for about three. But without breathing, without inhaling and exhaling, a person can live for only about three minutes. Your intake of oxygen and your expiration of toxins is essential to your life.

Optimal breathing involves breathing deeply and fully from the abdomen, yet many people take shallow breaths from the chest. This latter way of breathing limits the amount of oxygen you take into your body and the amount of toxins you release from your body.

Oxygen helps your cells provide you with the energy you need. Inhaling allows oxygen to enter your body, feed cells, and purify your blood and organs from toxins. Exhaling allows your body to eliminate those toxins. More than half of your body's toxins are expelled through exhalation. Cellular metabolism is also dependent on the oxygen you breathe in.

Abdominal breathing intensifies the quality of each inhalation and exhalation, as well as tones abdominal muscles. Aerobic exercise, or exercise that involves the presence of oxygen, improves the consumption and circulation of oxygen. After twelve minutes of intense aerobic activity, the body produces fat-burning enzymes. Evidence indicates that abdominal breathing may also play a role in body-fat control.

Breathing and the Emotions

Some psychology experts say that shallow breathing is a physical display of holding in or not expressing one's emotions. For example, when we become afraid, we tend to hold our breath or not breathe deeply enough. When we're angry, we tend to exhale more deeply than we inhale. When we feel stressed, we tend to take short, quick breaths.

By practicing abdominal breathing consciously when we are in a state of fear, anger, or stress , we can release extreme negative emotions more effectively.

Breathing and the Mind

A large percentage of the oxygen we inhale goes to the brain. Surely you've heard the expression, "not getting enough oxygen to the brain," to describe someone who is incoherent or disoriented.

Abdominal breathing helps maintain keen mental functioning by enhancing the brain's oxygen consumption. It also strengthens our ability to focus, concentrate, and think.

Breathing and the Spirit

Special breathing procedures and controlled breathwork have been spiritual practices for ages. Meditation and yoga techniques that focus on the breath have been spiritual as well as physical pathways to achieve a heightened state of focus and relaxation.

Spiritual inner peace is more easily achieved when the body, mind, and emotions are in balance.

Breathing and You

To enhance your physical, emotional, mental, and/or spiritual energy levels, you might need to make a conscious effort to breathe differently.

First you should determine if you are one of the many people who breathe shallowly from the chest. To do this, sit in a chair with your feet comfortably apart and flat on the floor, one hand resting on your chest, and the other hand resting on your abdomen. Exhale. Then, as you inhale, notice which hand rises more. If your abdomen expands more than your chest, you are breathing deeply from the abdomen. If your chest expands more than your abdomen, you are breathing shallowly from the chest.

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