Mindful breathing: breathwork training to take into your routine
Sometimes, when we’re exposed to periods of stress and challenging moments in our life, our bodies warn us.
It’s been happening with me—odd sleep patterns, uncharacteristic lethargy, and specifically, a tight pain in the lower abdomen. When I visited a chiropractor, he said my diaphragm was locked.
I knew I had to take better care of myself, not just through recovery, but through active ways to both relax and strengthen my body at will. I decided to research breathwork training, of all kinds, to test whether they would fix the pain. The results have been a revelation for me. So far, so good. But mindful breathing has had a huge impact on other elements of my life too.
In yoga, the practice of controlling the breath is named ‘pranayama’. This comes from a combination of two Sanskrit words: prana, meaning life force or energy, and ayama, meaning stretching, or expansion.Therefore, we can roughly translate ‘pranayama’ to mean ‘the extension of our life force’. A way to control our life and energy, and extend it.
Mindful breathing and yogic practices go back 1000s of years. But a quick look at Google Trends shows us how breathwork has come to prominence more recently across the world, with hundreds of apps like Waking Up (my personal favourite), Headspace, and Calm looking to counteract the stresses of modern life. But some people have taken breathing exercises to a completely new level. Some people, like breatharians, believe that we can live just on the breath alone. Wim Hof is the most famous example of a human being able to do what we consider impossible simply through the power of the breath and the mind.
I’m not here to tell you that breathing exercises are going to give you superpowers. But breathwork training can certainly have a profoundly enriching effect on your physical, mental and emotional state.
The science behind better breathing
Mindful breathing—focusing on your breath and learning how to control it—is an effective and on-demand way to lower stress levels and improve a variety of health factors. Every breath sends millions of signals to the brainstem from sensory receptors in the respiratory system. Faster breathing sends these signals more rapidly, triggers the sympathetic nervous system and contributes to a ‘fight or flight’ response.
Controlling your breathing, on the other hand, induces the parasympathetic nervous system, which dials down the feeling of anxiety and helps you feel calm and mentally clear. Since a stress response suppresses our immune system, maintaining more control over this response can help us fight illness. It also helps us fight mental illnesses like anxiety and depression too.
We can’t run from stress all our lives. In fact, a healthy amount of stress spurs us on and makes us feel challenged. However, when stress raises its ugly head, we can better adjust by using our breath.
For mental clarity
The autonomic nervous system governs the body’s sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-restore) responses in response to potential threats. In our biology, this used to work as a survival mechanism. But today’s world of non-stop notifications and information trips the body’s alarms often.
If you’re having a hard time staying motivated and focused amongst all these stresses, try breathing exercises. A 2018 study in Consciousness and Cognition found that breath-focused yoga increased participants’ attention spans.
The study below, conducted by Harvard University, is a more visual example. After 8 weeks of mindfulness practice (Averaging 27 minutes per day), gray matter volume increased in the brain regions related to learning and memory, emotion regulation, sense of self, and perspective.
For physical performance
It’s not just your mind that can benefit from using the breath as a vehicle to practice control-- your body will thank you too. Mindful breathing is confirmed by rowers, runners, swimmers to increase their performance and make their body work less strenuously will still reaping results. ‘Even speaking as someone whose lungs were always considered in the elite range even amongst Olympic oarsmen,’ says Olympic Gold Medallist Matthew Pinsent, ‘I know the benefits that this training can bring.’
Breathing deeply in yoga can actually help you avoid injury, oxygenate the body properly and keep you in the present moment, enabling a boost in calm and performance. In 2011, a major study at the University of Portsmouth tested 12 runners over six weeks, discovering that athletes who included breathing exercises as part of their training improved their times by 5-12 per cent.
For happiness and energy
When our mind is stuck thinking too much in the past, it can make us feel depressed. Likewise, having our mind too much in the present can cause us to feel anxious. The true balance to this is to be in the present moment: where true happiness lies, where there is no feeling of lack. Begin in this zone regularly can have incredible impact on your mental health, and help to, as ‘pranayama’ translates to, ‘extend your life force’.
The fact is, when we are feeling awful inside, we have the power to heal within. We need not reach out to external factors, like medicine, drugs, and the attention of others to make us feel better. In a report from the University of Pennsylvania, they found evidence of the positive impact of breathing-based meditation on those who suffered from severe depression, but did not respond well to antidepressants.
The burst of wellbeing you feel by mindful breathing, lowering your stress, and connecting deeply with the present moment, can have a profound impact on how you view your entire life, and is truly a practice to be prioritised.
6 mindful breathing practices to take into your routine
Mindful breathing can have profound effects over your mental clarity, physical health, and mental wellbeing. With that in mind, here are some useful practices to experiment with. Test which ones you respond to best and build them into your routine.
Awareness breath
This is the most simple exercise of the six to implement, and it’s possible to try this right now. The primary goal of bringing more awareness to your breath is to focus on being the “witness” to your state of being. Fixate your mind on the sensations of the breath, such as the rise and fall of your abdomen or chest, and wait for thoughts to pass through your mind. When they do, gently lock your focus back onto the breath.
Remember, losing concentration and following a thought is not a sign of failure. Think of it like a repetition at the gym, as though you were exercising your concentration.
Awareness breath in summary:
Start by pulling in three deep breaths, feeling the diaphragm expand.
Return your breath to normal.
Focus on being a ‘witness’ to your breathing pattern.
Inhale slowly through your nose, concentrating on the feeling of the air rushing in.
Follow the breath out as you exhale.
Repeat three times for almost instant relief and clarity.
Ujjayi Pranayama (Conquerors Breath or Ocean Breath)
A typical breathing technique known in yogic practices, Ujjayi Pranayama has a number of badass nicknames like Conquerors Breath, Ocean Breath, or Cobra Breath. This is because in this breathing technique, you constrict the back of your throat to lengthen each breath cycle, which gives you deep, full, and controlled inhalations and exhalations. This constriction creates a rushing sound, similar to waves (or even kind of like snoring or deep sleep breathing).
The idea behind this control is that you can move the breath deep from the diaphragm, all the way up the rib cage, and finally to the chest and throat. Observe the slowness of how you are breathing and use the sounds as an anchor for your concentration. Throughout the breathing exercise, listen closely and ask yourself how your state of mind is altering.
Ujjayi Pranayama in summary:
Take a comfortable position and fully inhale through the nose.
On the exhale, make a long 'Ha' sound with an open mouth.
Eventually, close the mouth and inhale, creating a slight restriction in the back of the throat. The breath should imitate the sound of rushing waves or a ‘half-snore’.
These sounds are an anchor to keep the mind focused.
Against the Grain Breath (Viloma Pranayama)
The ‘against the grain’ breath is quite self-explanatory: you manipulate your breathing in such a way that is not a habitual pattern of breathing, so that your mind is fully connected to the breath. It involves a collection of interrupted inhalations with pauses, followed by a collection of interrupted exhalations with pauses. Imagine that each interruption is a step up stairs, or a step downstairs.
The goal of this exercise is to manipulate your habitual pattern of breathing, so that your mind is fully in control of the breath.
This includes either splitting your full inhales or exhales into three or five 'steps'.
Between each step, initiate a slight pause where the breath is suspended.
The 4-7-8 method
This breathing exercises provides a focus on 3 stages: the inhale, the hold, and the exhale. The whole point is to do each stage at the allotted times: 4 seconds to inhale, 7 seconds to hold the breath, and 8 seconds to exhale. As you will see, the longer exhales are the longest of all the stages here, and for good reason: longer exhales are an easy way to hack the vagus nerve and provide relief against fight or flight stress. Practice this method for 4 breaths at the start, and eventually work your way to 8, and you will feel a deep sense of relaxation.
Rest your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Keep it in place throughout.
Inhale silently through your nose and count to four.
Hold your breath for seven seconds.
Push the air out through your mouth for a total of eight seconds.
Practice this pattern for four full breaths until deep relaxation. Once you get used to it, move up to eight breaths.
Wim Hof breathing method
The Wim Hof breathing method is considered to have a number of benefits, but should not be taken lightly. It is a power breathing method that induces a voluntary short stress response in the body which ultimately leads to increased resilience towards everyday stresses. According to studies, this breathing exercise enables you hack your physiology to alkalize the blood, better resist cold temperatures, and boost your immune system. Like all breathing exercises, never force this exercise and listen to your body.
Take a deep breath in, filling the lungs. Breathe out by passively releasing. Repeat this at a steady pace 30 times.
After 30 breaths, take a final deep breath in, and let it out. Don’t inhale again until you feel a strong urge to breathe (one to two minutes).
Take a full, deep, recovery breath in. Hold the breath for around 15 seconds and let it go.
Repeat the full cycle three times.
Practice alongside the video below to keep your pace
The 365 method:
Sticking with the numbers mnemonic can help us remember these exercises even clearer, but none can perhaps be clearer than this one. At least three times a day, breathe six times per minute (inhaling for five seconds and exhaling for five seconds each time) for five minutes.
Repeat all 365 days of the year. Simple.
Practice this exercise three times a day
Breathe six times per minute (inhaling for five seconds and exhaling for five seconds each time)
Do this for five minutes in total
Repeat all 365 days of the year.
Conclusion: the discipline of breathing mindfully
Reaping the benefits of mindfulness takes time and discipline. And without setting this time to build this into your routine, you’re not going to feel how this works.
Many meditation apps indicate that meditation should be an exercise that kick-starts your morning, and I feel it’s a perfect time for mindful breathing. It sets your mind right for the start of your day which then has a positive knock-on effect for the rest of it. When we achieve something in the first hour of the day, it gives us momentum. This is the reason why the military recommend making your bed first thing in the morning.
Thinking you don’t have time to use this life-changing practice? Then I recommend an old, uncredited zen saying: "You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day. Unless you're too busy, then you should sit for an hour." You can’t make time—you need to create it.
When you feel life slipping out of your control, hack your state of being with the simplest natural tranquilizer we have, and one that we can control at will: our breath.
