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HE BEST WAY to
calm down is so
innate to our lives,
we often take it for
granted: Taking a breath.
Focusing on your own breathing can have a significant impact
on your well-being and stress levels, and can even create physiological changes like lowering your
blood pressure. But for many of
us, when it comes to improving
our health, changing our breathing somehow doesn’t spring to
mind as readily as changing our
diet or exercise habits.
“We take our breath for granted
the way we take our heart beat for
granted,” Carla Ardito, a breathing expert at Manhattan’s Integral
Yoga Institute and creator of the
Breathing Lessons app, told The
Huffington Post. “The difference is
we can work on our breathing.”
And there’s plenty of precedent.
For thousands of years, the yogic
practice of pranayama (Sanskrit
for “extension of the life-force”)
has been used as a method geared
towards reducing stress and healing the body and mind through
targeted breathing exercises.
Ahead, find seven big health
reasons to pause and focus on
your breathing.
THE THIRD
METRIC
HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
MUTLU KURTBAS/GETTY IMAGES
T
We take our breath
for granted the way we take
our heart beat for granted.”
LOWER STRESS LEVELS
If your breathing is shallow, your
body is probably in “fight-orflight” mode reacting to stress,
says Ardito. Taking a minute or
two to sit quietly and focus on
your breathing helps your body
achieve a state of calm, shifting
from functioning out of the sympathetic nervous system (characterized by drive, flight and ambition)
to the parasympathetic nervous
system, which puts the body in a
state of “relax and receive.”