How to breathe for your health!

I think it's safe to say that most of the time most of us don't give a second thought to the fact that every minute, no, every second our lives are sustained by our ability to literally draw breathe! It's one of our greatest gifts and one that is so easily taken for granted, until, for whatever reason, such as allergies, illness, atmosphere etc. we are suddenly laboring over our breathing, then it's front and center. 

 

For instance, have you ever watched a very young baby breath their whole body seems to expand with every breath, they are truly breathing and using their full lung capacity, whether awake or asleep we see their whole chest raise and fall with every breath, as we get older that apparent deep easy breathing we enjoyed as a young baby seems to allude us.  

 

But let's think about it, people who participate in cardio sports understand the power of the breath, think of your distance runners, all that training and a lot of it is to create better lung capacity so that running over hundreds of meters or in the case of marathon runners who learn to master breathing for mile after mile, 26.2 miles to be exact, they will have the breath to take them across the finishing line. What about freestyle divers, the other day I was reading an article about divers who can hold their breath on average anywhere from 3 minutes to 10 minutes. Yet, according to The Guinness World Records the longest timed breath held is 24 min 37.36 sec, achieved by Budimir Šobat, Sisak, Croatia, on 27 March 2021. 

 

So, congratulations to Budimir, most of us though, when we think about our breathe we draw in as much air as we can and let it out with a big puff. 

 

However, breathing “correctly” can really enhance the quality of our lives and focusing on expanding our lungs fully and learning to control our breath, to do so, either sit in a chair with your back fully supported and both feet on the floor hip width apart, or lie on the bed, floor or yoga mat again with the feet hip width apart, relax your arms on the chair or on down beside your body, breathe into your belly as much as feels comfortable to you and breathe out slowly though the mouth releasing as much air as possible, as you do so focus only on your breathing and feel yourself totally relax with each breath. Breathing like this is great for stressful situations and can help calm our nervous minds, still or quiet the crazy thoughts, make us feel totally in control and leave us with way more feelings of self-reliance.

Practise with me now, sit or lay comfortably, close or soften your eyes, slowly breath in through your nose and feel your belly expand with a comfortable stretch, then slowly breath out through your nose, with each breath out feel yourself sink deeper into the chair or where you are lying, each breath out relax your shoulders, lelgs and feet. Repeat as many times as feels comfortable.