3 breathing exercises that help you dissolve stress and activate your self-healing powers

Do you have breathing problems?

Then you are not alone! Everyone has breathing problems!

What conscious breathing and breathing exercises can do for our physical and mental wellbeing I will explain in this blog article and also show you simple and highly effective exercises that you can apply immediately.

You will feel fresh, relaxed, strong and vital!

An exercise from Tibetan Breath Yoga and Pranayama

Man is born with the first breath and dies with the last.

The breath is the flywheel and the driving force for the entire body!

When it comes to stress management, improving health, or even curing inflammation and chronic diseases, it is often thought of various treatments, sports, nutrition, and much more. Only a few people think about working with the respiration and supplying the body and the cells specifically with oxygen, the life energy par excellence.

We can survive for years without sport, three weeks without food, three days without water, but only 3 minutes without breathing!

Here is an overview of the healing effects that proper breathing can have for your body:

strengthens the heart
supports weight loss because it stimulates fat burning
strengthens the nerves
relieves severe headaches and migraines
cells can absorb nutrients again
cleanses liver and bile
detoxifies the body
relieves digestive problems and stomach ache
reduces respiratory distress and asthma noticeably
strengthens the kidneys and thus the sexual power
lowers too high and raises low blood pressure (regulates)
strengthens all sensory organs: eyes, nose, ears, skin
improves the blood count of diabetics

and an overview of the healing effects that proper breathing can have on your mind:

helps with stress management
reduces depression
prevents burnout
increases the ability to concentrate
relieves fatigue and tiredness
helps with sleep disorders
releases emotional stress
resolves fears and phobias

Use the breathing to relax or wake up

Do you know that?

You are in a stressful situation, excited or shocked by an unexpected event. Your breathing then stagnates or is restless and hangs in the chest. It then becomes difficult for you to breathe deeply and in a natural rhythm.

Just as our breathing is adversely affected by stress, when we relax it is calm and deep.

Our breathing is therefore directly related to our experience and our mental and emotional state.

We can use this fact to specifically calm and relax through conscious and deep breathing!

Likewise, we can also use breathing exercises such as the pranayama (= Sanskrit: energy control = breathing techniques) exercise "breath of fire" to wake up our energy, activate it and to awaken power in us.

While calm breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and puts us into a resting state, fast, intense breathing activates the sympathetic nervous system and puts us in an active fight or flight mode.

So there is a direct and strong interaction between body and mind.

The mind affects the body and the body affects the mind.

If the body were a horse, then the breath would be the rider.

-Jonas Over

Conscious breathing

As a first exercise in this article, I'd like to introduce you to an incredibly simple method that you can use anywhere and anytime to relax, release stress from the nervous system, and instantly find more inner peace.

Focus your attention on the breath and feel how it enters the body at the tip of your nose and how it leaves again.
Do this for a few moments.
When your concentration fades, thoughts, sounds or other disturbing influences emerge, come back to the breath.
After just a few seconds you will notice how you become calmer and more relaxed.
Gladly you can also close your eyes (just not while car driving ;-P) and do it for several minutes

Use this exercise anytime and as often as you like. You will find that it will greatly enrich your life and make it more and more easy for you to relax and let go consciously.

The breath controls the mind

-Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Nauli - Trul Khor

Use the breathing to activate the self-healing powers and to promote health

As we already know, breathing affects our mind and vice versa. This affects the body and its health.

Stress can cause and increase disease, while relaxation and happiness have healing properties and might be the best in health prevention.

But there are also some very specific, medical and interesting effects that conscious breathing and breathing exercises have directly on our body and health.

I would like to introduce you to some of them.

On the one hand, the body is supplied with more oxygen. The elixir of life par excellence.

Usually our lungs absorb only 17 percent of the oxygen that we breathe in with the air.

Especially in exercises where we hold our breath, as it is the case with many Pranayama techniques and Tibetan Breath Yoga, the body produces more carbon dioxide, which is responsible for bringing oxygen into the blood. A targeted alternation between inhale and breath holding will train the body's ability to absorb more oxygen.

Healthy cells need oxygen to stay healthy and sick cells need it to get well again.

(Many people think that carbon dioxide is not good, but this is not correct. CO2 is essential for the body's ability to absorb oxygen.)

Furthermore, due to the increased oxygen content in the blood, the adhesions of the red blood cells dissolve. This will enable each individual to transport nutrients and oxygen into the cells. The regeneration processes of the body works faster and improves.

Especially by deep breathing in the abdomen, there are other outstanding health benefits.

By deep belly breathing, the diaphragm expands and moves the organs down and back up while exhaling. The organs are gently massaged.

This causes the organ function to improve. Even nutrient deficiencies can be remedied, because often the problem is not a lack of added nutrients, but the whole waste that is in the intestines and inhibits or blockes nutrient uptake.

Especially the different Pranayama and Tibetan Breath Yoga exercises are outstandingly suitable here, because many work very intensively with the movement of the organs.

In order for the cells to be supplied with energy, it is a basic prerequisite that this comes everywhere in the body. For this a well-functioning blood circulation is the key.

Breathing exercises activate the blood circulation in a very natural and highly effective way, so that every cell of the body can be supplied with energy.

Especially in those exercises where the organs are moved a lot, the lymph circulation is stimulated. As a result, the slag contained therein is transported to the excretory organs.

Below the diaphragm runs the vagus nerve. When we breathe deeply it is activated, which relaxes the body, because it is the most important nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system and responsible for getting into a state of rest and recovery.

One of my personal favorite facts about abdominal breathing and those exercises that work with the movement of the organs is the fact that they promote the production of happiness hormones. Especially serotonin, because perhaps the most important happiness hormone in the body is only to 5% formed in the brain. The other 95% are produced in the gut. If this is moved, stimulated and massaged, it produces more of it. The consequence; we will be happier ;-)

There are many more benefits and exciting facts about breathing and the effects of breathing exercises on our health.

In short, conscious breathing and specific exercises may be the simplest and most valuable tool we can use for our health, as all self-healing mechanisms in the body are stimulated and activated.

The abdominal breathing

Unfortunately, many people find it hard to breathe deeply even when they are resting. Therefore, the second breathing exercise that you will learn now is the deep belly breathing.

You can do this exercise whenever you have time, even while walking or at the desk.

It is also advisable to make the abdominal breathing in the evening before sleeping in bed. It will calm you down and help you to sleep better.

Sit or stand upright or lie down.
Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth (alternatively, you can only inhale and exhale through the nose).
Now make sure that you breathe deep into the abdomen while inhaling so that it comes out. When exhaling pull in the stomach slightly.
Do this for one to several minutes, always paying attention to inhale as deep as possible and exhale completely.
You are also welcome to put your hands on the abdomen, so that you feel your breath flow deep down.

Completely mastering the abdominal breathing has taken me about 3 months. So do not worry if it's hard for you to breathe deeply in the stomach.

I see it again and again in my workshops, about 90 percent of all people have a problem with deep breathing.

It just takes some time and practice. Physical and emotional blocks will be released and your body will be full of power and vital energy.

If you practice this regularly, your fellow human beings will soon admire you for your magnetic personality and your radiant expression ;-)

"For breath is life; if you breathe well, you will live long on earth."

- Sanskrit proverb

At the end of this article, I would like to give you now a very poewrful yet easy-to-use breathing exercise. It is highly effective in dissolving stress and nervousness.

The 4 7 8 breathing

It works like this:

Inhale slowly and deeply for four seconds.
Hold the breath for seven seconds.
Exhale through the mouth for eight seconds.

Repeat this cycle at least 5 times.

Enjoy how your body is enriched with fresh life energy and relaxes more and more :-)

You can also use this exercise as many times as you like.

It is recommended to do it twice a day for a period of four weeks. You will notice how it will always be easier for you to relax over time.

Man is born with the first breath and dies with the last.

Without exception in all ancient religions, dealing with the fundamental questions of being, breathing always played an important role.

Thus, breathing exercises and techniques can be found again and again in meditations and spiritual exercises.

The breath has always been seen as a key to deeper perception and understanding;

as access to our true nature.

We can not breathe in the past or in the future.

When we breathe consciously, we are in the here and now.

The only place where life exists!