We can live for weeks without food and days without water, but we can only live for a few minutes without air. Breath is the stuff of life. But the air we breathe goes far beyond the scientific composition of air, the nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and other elements.
In the practice of yoga, we talk about prana, the life force. Prana is what animates the body, what differentiates between life and death.
But it’s not all black and white. You probably know someone with low life force, low energy and without the spark of life in her eyes. People with low prana levels are often depressed, tired and perform poorly at work or school. They are often chronically ill and I sometimes think of them as energy suckers; they constantly complain and whine.
Yogic pranayama or breathing exercises are the key to raising energy levels in your body, shifting your mental and emotional attitude and for long life.
In scientific and esoteric terms, deepened breath floods your red blood cells with life-giving oxygen and helps expel carbon dioxide waste products from your system. It increases alertness, feeds fatigued brain cells and invigorates all organs and relieves stress. Deep breathing floods your body with calm and sustained energy.
Some Eastern traditions believe that we are born with a finite numbers of breaths allotted to us, so the more deeply and slowly we breathe, the longer we will live.
Imagine this
Here’s something to think about: Imagine you are driving your car and another car drifts over into your lane. You sound your horn and perhaps make a hand gesture or two toward the other driver. It’s a near miss and there is no accident and no one is injured.
What’s happening to you? Not only are you perhaps uttering a few choice words, your heart is pounding, your senses are hyper-alert – and your breath is shallow and fast.
If you stop your car, sit still and take ten deep breaths, everything changes in short order. Your heart rate returns to normal, the hyper-awareness and energy rush dissipate and everything mellows out.
Of course, what I’m describing here is a typical stress challenge and release. Those few deep breaths are powerful tools to help you release the stress of the near miss.
I’ll start with the most basic deep breathing. This may be all you need, but there are other types of breath you can employ for different levels of stress.
Use your lungs!
Let’s start with some basic physiology. I promise it will be painless.
Your lungs are the size of two footballs. They can hold a large volume of air, yet most of us use only about the upper one-third of our lung capacity. The diaphragm is a membrane that stretches across your torso beneath your lungs and, when your belly is relaxed the diaphragm allows your lungs to inflate fully.
It is natural to relax the belly for maximum lung capacity when you inhale and to contract the belly when you exhale. All of us breathe this way when we are asleep. Children and animals breathe this way. Somewhere along the line, most of us somehow got switched. I attribute it to the old Mom admonition to “Stand up straight, put your shoulders back and suck your belly in.” This time, Mom was wrong.
Deep belly breathing fills your body with oxygen and helps expel waste products most efficiently through the carbon dioxide exchange in the lungs.
Basic deep breathing
To practice basic deep breathing, sit comfortably with your spine straight, shoulders relaxed. At the beginning, it helps to put your hands on your belly so you can get a better sense of its movement.
Now take in a deep slow breath through your nose. Feel your belly push slightly against your hands as you fill your lungs completely. As soon as your lungs are as full as you can comfortably inhale, immediately begin to exhale, again, slowly and comfortably, slightly contracting your abdominal muscles to help expel all the air.
Continue breathing this way for several minutes. If this type of breathing is new to you, you may begin to feel a little light-headed. That is simply because your system is not accustomed to so much oxygen. The light-headed feeling will pass. If it is too uncomfortable, keep your breath slightly more shallowly until your body adjusts.
–Read more about the power of breath for stress relief in my book, 10 Best Ways to Manage Stress and look for even more details in my upcoming book, 10 Best Breathing Exercises for Long Life (out in the fall).
