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Manage Stress with Your Breath

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Manage Stress with your Breath


Our biology is brilliantly designed for survival. According to neurologist, Jonathan Rosenthal, host of the Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference, the stress response exists to “deploy resources, getting energy where it is needed,” in time, hopefully, to avert disaster. In a life-or-death crisis, this system can be the very reason we make it through a moment of danger and live to see another day. But in a chronically stressed society, in which our bodies cannot distinguish between the threat of an animal attack and the threat of interpersonal friction; a society in which we are flooded with too much distressing information; and a world containing an overabundance of sensory inputs (lights, sounds, screens and so on), most of us live in a constant state of being stressed out.


When a stressful experience occurs, the body releases stress hormones, which cause the heart rate to increase, breathing to grow more rapid, and body and mind to become more energized and alert. If you were experiencing an immediate physical threat, you would automatically take action (likely running or fighting)—actions that would help to process the flood of stress hormones in the body and ultimately help you return to a state of homeostasis. But when the stressor hits us while seated at our computer, driving on the highway or standing in line in the school cafeteria, the body does not have the opportunity to engage the gross motor movements, which the stress response evolved to produce, and we are left with the resulting excess of adrenaline and other hormones coursing through our bloodstream. The effect of continual stress on the body can have a multitude of deleterious effects, including high blood pressure, heart problems, headaches, digestive issues, muscle tension, fatigue, depression, weakened immune system and more. In children the effects can include delays in learning and growth.


Amazingly though, we have the physiological ability to mitigate the stress response. Polyvagal theory, the work of psychologist and neuroscientist, Stephen Porges, teaches us that the nerves that regulate the autonomic nervous system are bidirectional. We know that when the brain perceives a threat, it signals the body to ramp up a stress response. It is also true that the body can send signals of safety back to the brain and down regulate the very same stress response.


As I’ve mentioned, one of the physiological reactions to the stress response is to increase the rapidity of the breath. The brain tells the body to bring in more oxygen, more quickly. However, because we have the ability to control our breathing, it is also possible for the body to reverse that tendency and signal to the brain that all is well—by slowing, deepening and smoothing out the breath. Consciously changing our breathing in this way gives us the ability to soothe our nervous system into a parasympathetic state, in which the body can rest, heal, digest, learn, grow and so on. This, in part, is the practice of pranayama—yogic breath work.


The way we breathe matters.


Practicing focused breath work under the guidance of an experienced teacher can help the practitioner cultivate effective tools to interrupt the physiological stress response when it happens. It begins with a practice of simply noticing how the breath moves naturally and how that movement impacts the mind and the body. As we start to cultivate this awareness, we become more sensitive to our own deep-seated patterns (shallow breathing, mouth breathing, holding the breath and so on). We may also develop awareness of how our breathing changes under stressful circumstances. From there, learning even some very basic pranayama techniques to deepen, lengthen and smooth out the breath can help us access a state of equanimity when life gets tough. Ultimately, taking time to connect to our own breathing enables us to explore an amazing bridge that exists between our mind and body and develop tools to aid in our own practice of wellness.


***For a practice that places additional emphasis on breath work, check out Stretch and Restore, Wednesdays at 6:00 pm.


Sources:

Nestor, James. Breath.

Porges, Stephen, PhD. The Pocket Guide to Polyvagal Theory.

Rosenthal, Jonathan, MD. Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference

Van de Kolk, Bessel, MD. The Body Keeps the Score.


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