The Importance of Breathing Exercises for Relaxation
Recent years have seen a shift from conventional exercise methods that are designed to promote physical fitness into exercise methods that are designed to promote bodily wellness. While the distinction is relatively slight, the change has allowed people to seek alternative ways to reap the primary benefits of exercise: physical wellbeing and stress reduction.
And with that insight, we can see why deep breathing and other breathing exercises are no longer used as a way to maintain wellness while engaging in ancillary physical activities like weightlifting or yoga. Today, breath training is routinely practiced outside of physical activities to encourage wellness and, most notably, relaxation.
What is Deep Breathing?
While “deep breathing'' is a catchall term used to describe a variety of basic breathing exercises, it’s important to sum up the more complex terms associated, such as diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing, belly breathing or paced respiration.
In simplest terms, deep breathing is the process of inhaling air through your nose with the goal of completely filling your lungs, so much so that it causes the lower belly to rise as a result.
Put in practice, the University of Michigan’s Healthwise staff notes, “Deep breathing is one of the best ways to lower stress in the body. This is because when you breathe deeply, it sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax. The brain then sends this message to your body. Those things that happen when you are stressed, such as increased heart rate, fast breathing, and high blood pressure, all decrease as you breathe deeply to relax.”
Why is Deep Breathing Important?
Interestingly enough, the very practice has become somewhat of a rarity in our culture as, “for many of us, deep breathing seems unnatural,” one Harvard Health study states. “There are several reasons for this. For one, body image has a negative impact on respiration in our culture. A flat stomach is considered attractive, so women (and men) tend to hold in their stomach muscles. This interferes with deep breathing and gradually makes shallow ‘chest breathing’ seem normal, which increases tension and anxiety.”
While many of us have forced ourselves into this habit of short, shallow breaths in public to limit the expansion of our belly, the practice has more adverse health and mental effects than a quick study might acknowledge for a very simple reason: it limits our diaphragm’s full range of motion.
With every breath, there is an exchange of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. But when those deep breaths of air don’t occur, the diaphragm doesn’t receive its full share of oxygenated air.Though the result can seem minor when measured on a small scale, this practice can raise your heart rate over time, causing feelings of anxiety or stress. Conversely, consistently practicing deep breathing can create the opposite effect: a slowing down of heartbeats, in conjunction with a lowered or stabilized blood pressure, all of which result in feelings of relaxation.
Breathing and Relaxation
The body’s natural response to stressors is the “fight or flight” response (also known as acute stress). In preparation of a stressful situation, the body readies itself to confront or avoid danger. When inspired for appropriate reasons, such as life-or-death scenarios or something that mentally or physically terrifies us, the physiological response can produce the wherewithal to confront any number of challenges. That being said, when this sort of response becomes confused and directed toward more dreary, day-to-day stressors like money woes, job worries, traffic jams or relationship problems, a certain response dissonance can occur.
This unfortunate side effect of our natural “fight or flight” instincts can cause health problems. Most notably, high-blood pressure — a leading cause of heart disease. Going further, the acute stress response can suppress the immune system, which increases the chance of contracting an illness. Not to mention, the continued stress response can also be mentally damaging, often resulting in anxiety and depression.
With all that in mind, deep breathing is one of our body’s primary natural defenses to an improperly used acute stress response. This is further evidenced by the success of deep-breathing techniques. One such example of a successful deep-breathing exercise is, “the relaxation response … a technique first developed in the 1970s at Harvard Medical School by cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson. The relaxation response is a state of profound rest that can be elicited in many ways, including meditation, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation.”
What are Breathing Exercises?
Breathing exercises are daily routine methods, or complementary methods to a workout, to make breathing a more conscious effort of enriching individual wellbeing. They “can help you relax, because they make your body feel like it does when you are already relaxed.” Though they can be as simple as taking time to breathe deeply for a few minutes each day, there are also wellness, spiritual and scientific approaches to get the most out of breathing exercises.
And while there are well-known processes that encourage mindful breathing habits, such as yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong and mindful meditation, there have been quite a few formal studies in recent years that give a more scientific rationale for the techniques.
This is why newer breathing exercises that encourage respiratory muscle training (RMT) and inspiratory muscle training (IMT) have spread in popularity beyond their traditional use by those afflicted with respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). What’s more, many athletes are finding the value in these breathing exercises to help increase their lung capacity for competition at higher levels.
And beyond the breathing exercise options mentioned above, there is also new technology being developed to not only to help patients afflicted by respiratory conditions, but to strengthen the breathing of anyone who wants to better their own health and wellness.
Though cultural norms have dissuaded us from performing deep breaths in public, there has been a resurgence in the practice’s importance in recent years — and the science backs the practice. While shallow, quick breaths can become habitual, they can also result in higher heart rates and increased blood pressure, and over time, the added stress can cause anxiety or depression.
On the other hand, practicing conscious deep breathing through any number of meditative or scientific practices throughout the day can work to diminish the acute stress response that leads to these issues. Not only that, breathing exercises can cause the body to relax. And when made routine, breathing exercises can result in health benefits such as lower heart rates, lowered blood pressure, and reduced stress or anxiety.
1 “Stress Management: Breathing Exercises for Relaxation.” Stress Management: Breathing Exercises for Relaxation | Michigan Medicine.
2 Publishing, Harvard Health. “Relaxation Techniques: Breath Control Helps Quell Errant Stress Response.” Harvard Health.
3 Publishing, Harvard Health. “Relaxation Techniques: Breath Control Helps Quell Errant Stress Response.” Harvard Health.
4 Ibid.
5 Cherry, Kendra. “The Fight-or-Flight Response Prepares Your Body to Take Action.” Verywell Mind, 18 Aug. 2019.
6 Publishing, Harvard Health.
7 Ibid.
8 Michigan Medicine.