Why Should We Improve Our Breath?
Zoe Warren | Short Read
The breath can be used like a magic potion to help support our overall well-being. Effective breathing supports a healthy heart, lungs, brain, blood, nervous system and more. Harnessed properly it helps us energise and focus or relax and let go.
Going about our daily lives on auto-pilot we tend to breathe short and shallow not using the diaphragm or the lungs effectively, as well as not supporting our physical body this can also kick start a knock on effect to the nervous system leaving us less able to deal with stress in our day to day life. Wouldn’t we rather feel balanced and steady as our default setting?!
How do you breathe? Short, shallow, mouth breathing or long slow smooth nose breathing? Noticing your habits and patterns is a vital first step before you can change them.
To simply and effectively improve your breath:
Sit or stand up nice and tall to give your lungs the physical space they need
Breathe through your nose at least 80% of the time
Lengthen and slow your inhale and your exhale
Draw the breath right down into the lungs using your diaphragm
If you’re not sure if the diaphragm is in use, bring your hands onto your side ribs and see if you can feel your ribs gradually expand out towards your hands on the inhale and then slowly contract back down on your exhale as the diagphram draws the breath all the way down towards the belly.
Did you know gentle belly breathing like this also allows you to digest your food more effectively so a few mins of this before you eat one of Clodagh’s delicious suppers and all that goodness will be soaked up even better?
Sitting in a traffic jam, waiting for your bread to rise or standing in a queue..? Try to breathe like this as often as possible so it becomes an ingrained healthy habit to support your overall health and happiness.
Let us know how you get on trying this magic potion!.
Love, Zoe x
