Belly Breathing to Help Manage Stress and Anxiety
As B.K.S. Iyengar wrote,
“The yogi’s life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths.”
Wherever you are sitting when you read this, start to pay attention to your breathing. The pace of your inhales and exhales. Curious about the temperature of your breathing, how it feels in your body, and where the air is going in your lungs. Take three breaths like this and give thanks for each of them.
Give thanks because we often forget about our involuntary breathing, until something may happen when we’re forced to pay attention to it. I’ve had pneumonia and asthma before and know that pivotal awakening. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s been such a huge part of yoga all along.
Dating back to around 2000 BCC in the Indus Valley, the original yoga practice mainly consisted of meditation, breathing, spiritual and cleaning practices. Breathing techniques were recorded in ancient philosophical texts like the Yoga Sutras, and while the physical practice or asana meant “seat”—“yoga” was described as breathing, philosophy, meditation and spiritual liberation.
Our breathing is an everyday practice that can transform how we feel, yet many of us don’t know how to exercise it’s power. Instead many of us have become shallow chest breathers—inhaling through our mouth, holding our breath, and taking in less air to the deep part of our lungs. But it wasn’t always this way.
If you watch a baby, you’ll see their belly and chest expand. While they naturally do deep, belly breathing until around three-years-old, overtime our breathing patterns shift due to environmental stressors like pollution, noise, and other causes for anxiety. This is along with the cultural desire to have a flat stomach where we’re encouraged to tighten those muscles, which often results in holding in our breath.
But when we breathe in a shallow way, the body remains in a cyclical state of stress where our stress or anxiety causes shallow breathing, and our shallow breathing causes stress. This sets off our sympathetic nervous system, part of our autonomic nervous system that primes us for “fight or flight”.
This breathing pattern can also cause other immune issues and tension in other parts of the body. When we breathe with our chests, we use the muscles in our shoulders, necks, and chests to expand our lungs, which can result in neck pain, headaches, and an increased risk of injury. Our shoulders slump forward and our posture changes, as well.
To breathe most effectively and activate our parasympathetic nervous system (our natural calming response), our torso needs to be able to move with the breath – not just the upper chest. The belly needs to relax and distend with the contraction of the diaphragm, the ribs need to float, and the back needs to expand with the breath.
As my teacher Dana Slamp says, this creates a vacuum- like effect in the chest cavity, bringing more air into the lower lungs and visually extending the belly – even though the breath doesn’t go into the lower cavity. Since the vagus nerve travels through the diaphragm, and since the pericardium (the heart’s encasing) interdigitates with the diaphragm, belly breathing can be deeply calming to the pulmonary, cardiac, and nervous systems.
Let’s try it:
Set a timer for 3 minutes.
Sit comfortably with your hand on your belly.
Relax and breathe naturally through your nose. Observe the belly’s movement as you breathe.
When your mind starts to wander think, “Inhale, navel out. Exhale, navel in” as you breathe.
When the timer goes off, gently come bring your awareness back and observe how you feel.