Breathing Techniques for Stress Management
By Shankar
One of the favorite wellness tools we always enjoy sharing as part of our service protocols are useful and easy Breathing Techniques.
Many world cultures have incorporated diverse breathing techniques in their daily lives for centuries, in the western world this habit has not been adopted as part of our daily lives and we think we should, at least a bit! We want to share some additional techniques for stress management and their benefits. You may enjoy them also part of our services
Here you'll find the 3 basic ones, and below we bring you 3 new ones!
1. The 4-7-8 breathing technique, also known as 'relaxing breath'. It is very simple, you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and exhale with a duration of 8 seconds, and repeat for a minimum of 10 cycles, ideal 20, and 30 cycles if you really want to relax!
2. Or the 7-11...yep, you guessed it right! Breathe in for 7 seconds, exhale for 11 seconds, also do 10 to 20 cycles. Try both counts and decide for yourself which one works best for you.
3. If you want to go to sleep ASAP, use the Military Method, it is military-grade good ;-)
Relax your entire face, including the muscles inside your mouth.
Drop your shoulders to release the tension and let your hands drop to the side of your body.
Exhale, relaxing your chest. Use the 4-7-8 or 7-11 techniques.
Relax your legs, thighs, and calves.
Clear your mind for 18 seconds by imagining a relaxing scene.
Still on? Try to mentally repeat the words “don’t think” over and over for 10 seconds.
The benefits of practicing breathing techniques are numerous! Among them, reducing blood pressure, relax your muscles, by breathing deeply and slowly we give give the instruction to the rest of our brain, body, and systems to slow down, relax, move away from any fight-or-flight response.
By moving out of the 'stress-mode' our body stops producing cortisol (aka stress hormone) and immediately starts the regeneration process of our cells, balancing our systems, easing our bodily functions, allowing for elimination of lactic acid and other cellular waste, as well as many other benefits that have been extensively studied throughout the years.
Doing breathing exercises regularly will also allow your body to take-in and more heavily load your blood cells with larger amounts of oxygen, this additional oxygenation allows for organs to work better, remove toxins faster and more effectively, and many, many more...
One of our favorite Breathing gurus is taught by the guy that climbed Mount Everest wearing only shorts and spikes, he also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a similar outfit, he's the amazing Wim Hof! Here you'll find some of his breathing tutorials, check them out and let me know what you think!
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