Conscious Breathing

The First Step Towards Self Awareness

As long as we’re alive, breathing happens automatically, without thinking about it. Never thinking about our breathing is part of what’s killing us. If we don’t breathe deep enough, we never activate our body’s natural ability to manage stress and pain. Learning conscious breathing is the first most practical step towards increasing self-awareness and the discovery of your self-healing powers.

If you can learn one thing to improve your health, conscious breathing could be considered as the most important. If you’re not breathing right, both sleep and digestion are affected. Knowing how to breath properly is an essential part of pain and stress management(2), whether you have rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, or depression.

Without breathing, we die. Without breathing correctly, our bodies are stressed, we may feel tired and lethargic, and won’t digest our food properly. If you are holding your breath all the time, then you are starving your brain and heart of oxygen. This reduces our ability to stay focused and increases stress and pain levels.

Conscious breathing doesn’t require a big change in our lives, but it will reward us with intelligence.

Take breathing off automatic

Most of us were never taught how to breathe properly, and so a majority of people are not consciously breathing. The right way to breathe is all the way into our belly. Most of us only use the top one-third of our lungs. Only when our bellies rise are we breathing deep enough. This may never happen if we never take breathing off automatic.

When we breathe shallowly for most of our day, we are starving our cells of the oxygen they need for everything they do to keep us alive. Optimum digestion, energy levels, and immune defenses cannot be maintained if we never get our lungs moving air. When we breathe so shallowly, this contributes to the very stress, panic, and overwhelm we feel that keeps us bound up tight with tension.

Books on Breathing

Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve Your Mental and Physical Health
Paperback – December 27, 2016
by Belisa Vranich (Author)

The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter
Paperback – November 29, 2016
by Patrick McKeown (Author)

Just Breathe: Mastering Breathwork Paperback – February 27, 2018
by Dan Brule (Author),‎ Tony Robbins (Foreword)

The Healing Power of the Breath: Simple Techniques to Reduce Stress and Anxiety, Enhance Concentration, and Balance Your Emotions
Paperback – June 12, 2012
by Richard Brown MD (Author), MD Gerbarg Patricia (Author)

The more oxygen the better

Without knowing how to breathe correctly, everything else we do, from eating to sleeping to exercising and relaxing, will be reduced in effectiveness(1). Learn to breathe consciously and become aware of your breath during the ordinary course of your day. By doing so, you’ll be able to breathe deeply more easily, more often, and thus provide your body with the oxygen it needs to digest your food, reduce fatigue, alleviate pain and stress, and relax your body at the cellular level. You’ll naturally become more aware of your body if you can learn to bring some of your awareness to your breathing patterns for as long as you’re awake.

Breathing and Self-Awareness

People inhale and exhale on average more than 20,000 times every day. That’s thousands of chances to catch yourself breathing and to consciously breathe more deeply. Our journey towards self-healing means we absolutely need to start figuring out how to develop better self-awareness. Without self-awareness, we cannot make healthy choices and our health will be compromised. Breathing is the fastest way to learn self-mindbody awareness. If we cannot pay attention to our breath, then we are probably not listening to the way our body feels. The more we listen to our body’s needs, the more we will learn to pay attention to our breathing.

Breathe. Exhale. Breathe. Don’t forget to exhale! Every breath is a chance to fill your lungs with air, slowly and consciously, through your nose and into your abdomen. Breathe. Exhale. Breathe. Exhale fully each lungful, then pull with your diaphragm another full breath, with full awareness every time.

Conscious breathing means paying attention

Proper breathing will play a major factor in almost every single activity we do as part of our daily chronic pain management practice. Quite simply, we are not being self-aware if we are not aware of our breathing. Thus becoming more self-aware starts with awareness of our breath.

Rev up your oxygen intake

Getting oxygen into our bloodstream is by far the best reason to exercise. If we ever needed a reason to get our bodies moving, it’s so that we can learn what it feels like to breathe deeply. In fact, it may be impossible for us to breath deeply if we never do anything to get our hearts beating, because our chest and abdomen are probably constricted and tight from lack of activity and motion throughout our day.

By revving up the oxygen intake, with vast lungfuls of air, every cell in our bodies wakes up and does its job keeping us alive more effectively. This isn’t rocket science, and we don’t need a doctor to know how good we feel when we’re getting a LOT more oxygen on a regular basis. Without getting enough oxygen into our system, our metabolism slows down, we keep on more weight, our toxins build up faster, we fatigue our entire system, and we become more susceptible to disease and sickness.

Experience relief from pain and anxiety with deeper breathing

Anxiety always comes with shallow breathing; shallow breathing always causes anxiety (3). If you suffer from stress, anxiety or chronic pain, chances are you’re holding yourself tight, barely breathing, or breathing very shallowly. You’re probably not breathing normally and might even be outright stopping yourself from breathing by holding your breath for long periods of time. Uptight folks hold our breath especially when we’re concentrating on something. Down at the cellular level, our entire body is shrinking, contracting, and making it even more difficult to breathe. We may have aches in our ribcage or pains all over our body which we can’t explain.

Make conscious breathing a priority

Paying attention to breathing should become a standard daily mindbody wellness task which everyone should practice. We really need to make it a priority to become more aware of our breathing in every waking moment. Learn to think of your breath often. Every time you do, you should take a large, deep breath inwards, slowly through your nose, and then exhale just as slowly. Try to make each breath a little bit slower every time, but never forgetting to breathe and making sure to fill our lungs to at least 90% capacity with every inhalation. Each time we exhale, we should expel about 90% of our air.

EVERY BREATH IS LIFE

According to experts, most people breathe at 10-20 percent of their full capacity. Restricted breathing greatly decreases respiratory function, which in turn decreases energy levels in the body. Since oxygen is our main source of life, and exhalation is the main way to expel toxins from our bodies, poor breathing can contribute to a multitude of health problems, from high blood pressure to insomnia. Poor breathing may even contribute to some forms of cancer: In 1931, Otto Warburg won a Nobel Prize for determining that only oxygen-starved cells will mutate and become cancerous. That should be proof enough to learn how to breathe properly!

The Imporance of Nasal Breathing – Gaiam

Get the rust out of your lungs

If you’re having trouble breathing very deeply, get up and go for a walk until you get winded. Use the time when you’re winded to naturally breathe more deeply, paying attention to how it feels going into your lungs, and imagine it flowing intelligence into your arms and legs where you need healing from pain and discomfort. Imagine exhaling the stress and anxiety right out of your neck, shoulders, and back.

Take 5 minutes for yourself

While we’re focusing on breathing deeply, maybe close our eyes, hum a bit, perhaps sing a note with every breath. After deep breathing for at least 5 minutes, we will experience a considerable benefit. Our mindbody will feel calmer, our muscles will be more relaxed, and our self-awareness will become more present. These benefits will happen every time we stop and take five minutes to breathe consciously.

The reason we’d want to close our eyes during any relaxing breathing practice is to relieve our brain from processing vision; this lends more of our attention towards our breathing and how our body feels.

Give conscious breathing a try

Breathe all the way into your abdomen, making your belly rise with every breath. Think of expanding your rib cage and lifting your head from breathing so deep. Perhaps try raising your hands above your head to help lift and open your rib cage for a deeper breath.

After filling your lungs with air, you might feel like holding your breath a moment; while you do, lean from one side to the other to loosen up your spine and open up the channels between your ribs. Don’t hold your breath for long (unless you are practicing Wim Hof Method). If you are sitting, engage your feet and plant them on the firmly on the floor as though to lift yourself standing but instead just change your weight from hip to hip, getting motion into your body while you continue breathing deeply.

Deep breathing helps with these issues

Chronic pain, anxiety, stress, muscle tension, headaches, fibromyalgia, worry, panic, fear.

Deep breathing is a natural painkiller(4).

Knowing how to breathe, and knowing how to calm our body and mind, are the primary ingredients of relief for everyone who suffers from chronic pain, anxiety, stress, and PTSD. No matter how severe your conditions are, your body needs more oxygen than we usually give it, and especially if you’re not exercising regularly, you should be doing deep breathing throughout your day. You will more easily maintain your posture, your mental stability, and your energy levels if you breathe more deeply, more often.

LEAVE REMINDER NOTES

Knowing that forgetting to consciously breathe leads to increased pain and anxiety is like knowing that biting your fingernails eventually leads to bloody nails. Or like when you know crossing your legs causes your hip to feel sore, but you consistently catch yourself crossing your legs.

How can we help ourselves become more aware when most or all of our attention is being held captive by our chores, our jobs, our pain? We put up signs. Put up post-it notes on your bathroom mirror at home. Put a post-it on your desk. Put one on the dash in your car. Put one in your purse or wallet.

These notes would say something like, “STOP CROSSING YOUR LEGS,” or “BREATHE!” or “INHALE. EXHALE.” or “SIT UP STRAIGHT” or “STOP SLOUCHING & BREATHE!” or “CONSCIOUS BREATHING!”

Why Bother?

Once we learn to breathe consciously, then we can consciously learn to change our brain states and lower our heart rate, among other things, just by thinking about it. Practice builds brain muscle and we train ourselves to pay attention! Which contributes to relief from chronic pain, anxiety, and stress.

You need to learn how to listen to what your body is doing. Make it part of your daily routine to start paying more attention to how your body feels instead of trying to run away from it. There’s nothing more oxygen can’t help with when it comes to your mindbody. More oxygen = more self -awareness. They go hand-in-hand. If we want to become better at everything we do, then we must start with awareness of our breath. Learn how to become more self-aware, and take over conscious control of our breathing as often as possible.

Learn better breathing
in Denver

Breathing techniques can be learned with Yoga or Tai Chi. Fundamental Yoga classes are a great place to have someone teach you mindfulness breathing. Yoga studios can be found all over the greater Denver area, and within most mountain resort areas as well. Follow this Google Maps link to find a Yoga studio near you: https://goo.gl/maps/ZjscvYgcj5J2

The Body&Brain facilities around Denver specialize in both Yoga and Tai Chi.
https://www.bodynbrain.com/locations

For more locations around Denver, check out the BodyMind Denver listings.

Ultimate Healing Guide: Self-Awareness: