Breath exercises & Breathwork- a trend, medicine & a work-in
Breathwork, and creating conscious awareness of your breath, is not only a supertrend that can get you "in the flow". It can also optimize your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, in an effective and powerful way.
Breathwork comes in various forms and styles, but with different intention. Some breathing techniques can provide a personal transformation and a way to access your own bodys inner wisdom and can enables us to actively change our physiology and rebalance our nervous system. The result of breathing has the backing of science and physical research.
We breathe in and out about 22,000 times a day. Our lungs fuel us with oxygen, our body's life-sustaining gas, then remove the oxygen and pass it through our bloodstream, further on to tissues and organs that allow us to walk, talk, move, eat and well…live.
Conscious breathing can help us work in our two autonomic nervous systems (read more about the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system here). Used right - we can get the systems to work for us, not against us.
Breathe to your fullest - live to your fullest. To practice breathwork continuously will raise our energy, frequency and our whole personal vibe! Breathwork can help increase emotional well-being and resilience, enhance your physical and mental ability. Breathwork can also open up a profound spiritual journey.
Don´t Break down - Break through and reach your full potential! Just Breathe.
10 reasons Why Breathwork is such a powerful tool:
1. Release and reduce stress, anxiety, burnout syndrome, grief, depression and anger
The condition of our breath mirrors the state of our inner world. When we feel stressed or anxious, our breath gets shallow i.e we tend to breath into our chest, instead of all the way down to our belly, which activates our diaphragm. The breath becomes can feel unsteady and sometimes we even hold our breath which makes the anxiety or fatigue increase. Long deep breaths all the way down to our belly, working with our diaphragm, can help us feel calm, centered, grounded and energized.
Our nervous system function best when they are regulated. Deep breathing can activate and regulate our parasympathetic nervous system , slowing down the heart rate and lower the blood pressure. Plus, create a feeling of calm and reducing the overall stress and anxiety. However, we need to learn how to regulate both nervous systems, finding the switch in between. Those specific style of Breathwork will strengthen the body from within. One way to describe it is to compare it to a physical body stretch.
Breathing can go beyond nervous system, it also affect and can shift our brainwaves! According to neuroscientists, there are a direct correlation between increased alpha brain waves and for example reduced symptoms of depression. On a normal day, we move through five different types of brainwaves. Breathwork is effective in shifting our brainwaves from Beta to Alpha, and even Theta, and by doing so decrease negative thought patterns, and high stress levels. This is one reason of why practicing Breathwork can decrease negative thought patterns, and instead work on the opposite.
The five types of brainwaves:
Gamma Waves: Heightened perception and consciousness
Beta Waves: This is our most frequent state. We are attentive, in mind mode, making decisions, and solving problems. But here we can also feel agitated, stressed, tense, speeded, scared or obsessive.
Alpha Waves: A state of present-moment mode. Relaxed, aware and reflecting - in the now.
Theta Waves: In the theta state we are even more relaxed. We are open to receiving intuitive or deep insights, clarity or aha movements beyond our normal conscious awareness. This state that can happen in breathwork, during deep meditation, yoga nidra or during our deep sleep.
Delta Waves: The slowest of our brain waves usually happens during deep and dreamless sleep. Like almost losing awareness of our body
2. Increase your energy, detoxify your body and boost the immune system
Oxygen is one of the most important resource required by our cells. The more oxygen - the better the body functions, including organs and tissue. Breath work can improve oxygen capacity in the blood and the energy that is released into our cells increases. This can lead to overall improved energy levels, boosted immunity and stronger stamina to push through a physical challenge or give extra needed energy if you didn’t get a good night’s sleep or are having a day of high worry or anxiety (drains energy).
Practicing Breathwork can help to consciously control your energy levels and your immune system.
3. Increase feelings of happiness, wholeness, self-awareness, presence, joy and courage
During Breathwork we can access places deep within you where time almost does not exist. The state of flow. It creates an experience of deep presence and self-awareness. The brainwaves alter. Getting into a more dreamlike state of being of Theta when slowing down, compared to the thinking and doing state of Beta and Alpha. In this state of being in the present moment, you can experience feelings of happiness and joy, as you experience a shift in consciousness. Or - an altering of the emotional state.
Deep breathing also increases our endorphins, also called “feel good” chemical! By doing so we can get a push to reach an emotional balance, and feel empowered!
4. Greater self-love and self-acceptance
Sounds easy to love oneself. But sometimes we get stuck in our minds with the lingering feeling of not being enough! Breathwork can get us back in our bodies again and though this specific part is hard to describe scientifically, since it is a felt experience, it is one of the most profound benefits and experiences with testimonials as: “I feel like I have come home”. “I can feel ME”. Beautiful! Breathwork can create a deeper connection with yourself. Enhance the relationship between You and You. A relationship to hold dearly. Which opens up for the process of self love.
Some techniques can bypass a part of our frontal lobe, called transient hypofrontality. This part of the brain is where the inner critic exists, or monkey mind, lives. The result is that the inner critic can be bypassed, we can start to rewire limiting beliefs and soften tension and gripping feelings concerning the heart. of Breathwork can enable transient hypofrontality, which in short means that we
5. Improve sleep and reduce insomnia
Deep breathing can help to calm the nervous system as well as it also increases melatonin production, a “sleep-inducing hormone”, which is often at low levels in insomniacs
6. Heal emotional traumas and energetic blockages in the body
The majority of our brain activity lies beyond our conscious awareness, actually as much as 95%. This includes actions and thoughts, but also past situations and life events which we imprint in our muscles and our nervous system. Which means, it is not only our brain that remembers. Also our physical body is keeping score. At times it shows up as negative behavior.
Talk therapy can help us to identify these fears and traumas, but when they are hidden in the subconscious or isn’t always easy to just "let go" by addressing our logical mind. They are still stuck in our bodies, holding us back from living the life we want to live.
Breathwork is a highly effective and powerful tool to help release stuck emotions, unravel and release fear, traumas, rewire limiting beliefs and emotions.
7. Lower blood pressure and help reduce physical pain
Diaphragmatic, or deep slow, breathing helps the muscles to relax, and heart rate to slow down. This allows the blood vessels to dilate, increasing the circulation and can help lower blood pressure.
Feel to heal is quite real. Chronic pain can have a huge negative effect on body and mind. One effect can be trying to distance yourself from your body in an effort to ignore your pain, i.e you are also distancing yourself from your body’s innate ability to heal itself. Deep breathing can help to release endorphins in the body. Which reduces sensitivity to pain and boosts pleasure, resulting in a feeling of well-being. Breathing deeply can also help reduce pain due to changes in the acidity level of the body, making it more alkaline. Breathing affects the cortisol output, reducing stress and the feeling of pain. Diaphragmatic breathing has a therapeutic effect on chronic pain due to the work on one of the largest muscles in our bodies (yes, the diaphragm is a muscle), when we massage it by breathing, creating it to relax instead of being tense as a result of pain.
In short - Breathwork will reconnect you with your body, which actually helps the healing process.
8. Detoxifies the body
The more you practice breathing deep, the healthier and cleaner blood flow you will have. That promotes the function of organs, including your intestines. It can also create a positive loop by the reduce of stress, which reduces cortisol, which in turn reduces gut inflammation.
Breathwork can assist the digestive process by stimulating and increasing blood flow throughout the digestive tract, improving intestinal activity as well as reducing symptoms of bloating and gas.
When we can be in our parasympathetic nervous system, then rest and digest can occur.
9. Breathe to improve digestion
The more you practice breathing deep, the healthier and cleaner blood flow you will have. That promotes the function of organs, including your intestines.
Breathwork can assist the digestive process by stimulating and increasing blood flow throughout the digestive tract, improving intestinal activity as well as reducing symptoms of bloating and gas.
Breathwork can also create a positive feedback loop by reducing stress, which reduces cortisol, which reduces gut inflammation.
10. Breathwork can alter state of consciousness and increase performance
Apart from physical, emotional and mental benefits, there is one more, highly positive and welcomed benefit. Breathwork can create a powerful space for self-exploration, spiritual awakening and a deeper connection to ourselves and others. We can reach the so called flowing state
An optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. Where the focus, the creativity, the solutions, visions get so intense, easy and clear that everything else disappears. When we are so aware, present and it melts with all actions we do.
We are like one. Us and the Universe - not the ego me, the bigger part of me. Where our sense of self, ego, vanishes.
Here - all aspects of performance skyrockets as we unlock our true potential, break new barriers, unlock potential, we co-create and cooperate as one.
The breath takes you where your mind can't go. (Note: certain breathing techniques)
There are mushrooms, and other chemical thing you can use. Some advocated plant medicine to create this psychedelic experience, to go deep into your subconscious in order to travel within, let go and ultimately re-wire negative or old beliefs. But truth is - you already have it in your own body! You can create this all by yourself. A breathwork experience can be psychedelic, we actually have some DMT (the active ingredient in some psychedelic mushrooms) in our bodies, which is possible to be released just through breath. Just by breathing, without substances, you can connect to your spirit, your higher self, in a safe way. And that creates empowerment, renews your energy for real! It might take some practice, the trust to let go of control, but many do experience a deep sense of oneness, bliss, a connection with the divine and a feeling of deep safety and surrender. Breathwork can impact the way our consciousness and subconscious minds interact, allowing our creativity and intuition to prosper and deepen, creating clarity, insights and inspiration. Reminding us that from this present moment, we can create a new reality.
Breathwork - an easy accessible tool
Breathwork is an easy accessible, simple (well, it does come with resistance at times but well worth continuing practice) tool to in a very safe way address stress, anxiety, grief, depression and anger. We can create an emotional release, output so our visiting emotions and moods don’t take over our personal and professional lives.
Your breath can calm, balance, energize, strengthen, cleanse, heal and it can make you flow. Are you ready to embrace the many benefits of breathwork? You find group Breathwork sessions in Stockholm or Online here or book a 1:1 here
