Have you taken a breath today?

Now I know that sounds silly doesn’t it.  Of course you have. But have you really taken a breath?

There is nothing more irritating than when we are in a negative state of mind, and someone says to you: “just breathe .”   But what does this phrase mean? And what would happen if we did?

First I would challenge you by saying it will be difficult to “think” your way through this. There is a good chance you have trained your body to react during stress, and I would guess it is not to breathe. Some people may choose fight or flight responses. Others may freeze or faint, and still, others may tend or befriend—all different stress responses.

What if taking a pause would change everything?

 I would encourage your first step to be to focus your attention on the area of your heart. I would then ask you to take a deep breath in that area. This will slow the stress response in the body. It seems so simple, yet without purposeful training of that “stress response muscle,” we will likely forget.

Does taking a deep breath feel natural to you? How often do you take a true diaphragmatic breath? For many of us, the answer is less often than we’d expect.

Taking a proper breath is an innate skill that often lies dormant. Why?

Harvard Medical School theorized that not calling on the breath may be a social construct taught to men and women to restrict the release of emotions. When men are taught to hold back tears and women anger, they are unconsciously practicing irregular breath and holding back breath. Social pressures around body image further restrict breath and reinforce the limiting “chest breath” that most of us rely on day-to-day. Not engaging the diagram in a regular breath adds consistent tension, stress, and anxiety in the body. This is one of the reasons why taking those deep breaths can cause immediate release for chronic stress.

Consider another situation: You are on your way to an important meeting, and you get stuck in traffic. In a race against time, your heart starts to race, your muscles become tense, and your breath quickens. As your body detects stress, it releases stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline, to prepare the body to respond. This is what quickens your heart rate, tenses your muscles, and quickens your breath. When we pause and take a diaphragmatic breath, the abdominal engages and encourages a full exchange of oxygen, sending new signals to the brain of a relaxed state. There is a decrease in heart rate, the mussels and breath relax, and stabilized blood pressure. Engaging with diaphragmatic breath can release the effects of acute stress.