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Breathwork To Improve Health
Breathwork To Improve Health
Breathwork To Improve Health
necessarily react the same way every time. Cannabis can work exactly
the way you plan it, but a new strain or different dosage can throw you
off unexpectedly. Especially with high -THC content, you might experi-
ence side effects, like stress, anxiety, or even panic attack.
In this article, we are going to talk about the importance of proper
breathing and how to utilize it to take back control over your mind and
body and to ease the side effects of marijuana.
Breathing is such a basic and essential part of life that we don’t even
think about it much. It has been on autopilot since day one, but what
if there is more to it.
Diaphragm
Practicing conscious deep breathing for 3-5 minutes any time during the
day can have tremendously positive effects on your health. Why? Clean
oxygen travels through your body, your brain, your heart, that can ease
depression, helps relaxing, eases headaches, lowering cortisol (stress
hormone) level in the body. While this all sounds great, practicing mind-
ful breathing does more, than alleviate a bit of anxiety.
Breathing techniques are not a newly found trend. The power of breath-
ing techniques has been known and passed down from generation to
generation since the dawn of humanity. Spiritual seekers and yogis have
often utilized different techniques because they believed that breath-
ing is the connection between mind and body since it is the only bodily
function that we can do both consciously and unconsciously.
They also found out that many diseases were the result of improper,
inefficient breathing so, breathing techniques were used to heal the
body, to reach mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical wellbeing.
If you have ever attended a yoga class or tried mediation you already
know, that all starts with breathing. It helps you focus, reach a certain
state of mind, and relax.
By now we know quite a lot about cannabis, its benefits, and also a few
side effects. However, we cannot expect our body to react the same
way every single time since there are many factors that can play a role
in this situation.
We can be tired, our hormones can be off, even the weather can affect
our mood, not to mention everyday stress. We also try new strains
from time to time, but even the strains that have the same name from
different growers can have a slightly different effect.
Try these exercises next time you are feeling anxious or panicked.
Sit comfortably with a straight spine, and place your hand on your
knees or where it is. This exercise helps you relax and get centered.
2. Try this breathing technique when you feel tension and fear.
Sit down and push your back against the wall, close your eyes.
- Place your palms on your face and close your ears with
your thumbs.
- Place your index fingers on your forehead, and rest three
fingers on the side of your nose, slightly covering your
eyes
- Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose
- Exhale through your nose with a closed mouth, while
Keep doing this exercise until you feel better. Aim for 25 repeats first
and see how you feel. Keep going if you still feel anxious.
Luckily, we began to recognize, that the ancient teachings are filled with
remedies to modern day problems. One of the great publications about
the importance of breathing is James Nestor’s book: Breath: The New
Science of a Lost Art.
Besides the study, he searched the world for answers, tracking down
men and women who can help him understand the hidden science
behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya,
and Tummo.
Current research shows us, that practicing different breathing exercises
can jump-start our whole body. It can enhance athletic performance,
refresh our internal organs, ease asthma, autoimmune disease, and
allergies. Relieves stress, calms the mind, and helps with panic attacks.
Our nose was naturally made to breathe through it, because only the
nasal pathway is equipped to heat up and filter the air. Breathing
through our nose triggers hormones, it can lower blood pressure,
evens heart rate, and keeps our body in balance. Inside the nose lies a
whole network of neuro sensors that constantly monitor the air that we
inhale or exhale and sends signals to the body to react to those signals
appropriately.
In his book, Nestor explains
how researches were
shocked to find that our
ancestors from a hundred
thousand years ago had
twice the size of nasal
pathways.
It is called over breathing, which means breathing too fast. This causes
an increased heart rate along with poor oxygenation of the body.
After studying this phenomena Nestor found that the ideal breath cycle
is 5.5 seconds inhale and 5.5 seconds’ exhale. This slow but steady
pace of breathing insures the best oxygen to CO2 ratio.
There were many people throughout our history who came across the
miraculous healing power of breathing techniques but sadly whether
they were trained medical professionals or just self-thought pulmonauts
their techniques and sometimes incredible results all but faded into
oblivion.
Modern medicine completely disregards breathing methods as a way to
treat certain health problems although when we unearth some old, for-
gotten studies it becomes clear that it is never to late to extend our lung
capacity with conscious breathing techniques.
One of the more interesting symptoms of our modern, office dwelling
lifestyles is shallow breathing. Shallow breathing is the drawing of mini-
mal breath into the lungs, usually by drawing air into the chest area
using the intercostal muscles rather than throughout the lungs via the
diaphragm.
We do this without even noticing throughout the day and studies show
that some people even stop breathing for short periods of time without
ever being aware of it. This type of unconscious breath irregularity is
potentially very harmful but ironically if we do conscious breath restric-
tion or breath extension it can be extremely healthy and useful to take
back control of our breath and thus eliminating or at least reducing un-
healthy breathing habits.
Buteyko breathing
The point of this technique is to train the body to breathe in line with
its metabolic needs. For the most of us this means breathing less.
Box breathing
Navy seals use this technique to stay calm and focused in tense situ-
ations.
- Take a breath in, then exhale through your mouth with a whoosh
sound.
- Close the mouth and inhale quietly though your nose to a mental
count of four.
- Hold for a count of seven.
- Exhale completely through your mouth, with a whoosh, to the count
of eight
- Inhale 3 seconds
Chest
Solar plexus
Belly
We hope you found this article not only enjoyable but useful and
remember: breath well to be well :)