Inhale, exhale: I breathe to live. You breathe to exist. We really have no choice—our cellular activity depends on it. But is there something more to breathing than just being able to survive as a mammal? Age old wisdom and science say yes!
In Yoga’s mother tongue, Sanskrit, the breath is referred to as ‘prana,’ but it’s really so much more than that. ‘Life force’ is another definition of prana that perhaps more aptly portrays the essential and universally giving nature of our respiratory system. Whole yogic practices have been devoted to manipulation of the breath, called pranayama, and many of them predate the physical poses, or asana, we are used to when we think of yoga today.
Recently, science has caught up to what yogis have known for centuries: the breath has the absolute power to control our lives, influence illness, release emotions and trauma, stabilize mental fluctuations and calm or invigorate our systems. Because, dear reader, we live in a time where we don’t necessarily believe the wisdom and tried and true practices of old without a systematic-review-randomized-control-study stamp of approval, I’ll be validating the following amazing benefits of a life-breathed-well with all the scientific evidence you’ll ever need (Fill your boots by following any of the links!).
So take a big breath and let’s dive in.
Breathe to Influence Your Physical State
From high school science or probably even before that, we learned about the human respiratory system: breathe oxygen into your system, let the heart and arteries carry it out to your peripheral muscles and work its magic. Veins return the residue—carbon dioxide—back through to the lungs where we exhale it to the atmosphere. Repeat or risk death. Our brains NEED oxygen to survive. Without it, we’re done. I could stop this article here, certainly, what more proof do we need than that? But I’d like to explore a little deeper… there’s much much more.
Want to perform better athletically? Intellectually? In any way? You need to efficiently get oxygen into your body parts that need it in order to reach your maximum potential. This oxygen delivery and usage takes training. If you’re not an athlete with cardiovascular conditioning this might mean learning to breathe more deeply and to fully exhale so we can think clearly. Even athletes need to reevaluate their breathing patterns often. Efficiency is key here, but so is using the breath to your advantage when you need it to.
Methods for deep breathing to control body reactions have become popular with the cold-plunge craze of the last few years. Breathwork has been used by performers, presenters, and anyone working high-stress jobs for probably all of eternity too. In such cases, the breath is used to down-regulate the system so that it doesn’t overreact and cause performance issues (like panic, fatigue, or freeze-type sympathetic responses). Useful!
Conversely, the breath can be used to awaken our bodies when we’re feeling sluggish, need a boost, or want to increase sensation or experience. More active, full breaths help to clear our heads, pumping life-force into us and injecting energy. Many use it as a tool to bring about razor sharp focus. Ever watched a boxer before a match pumping themselves up? Those strong, forced breaths are not meant to put them in a chill, relaxed state. They’re driving for that razor-sharp focus and prepping their bodies to move fast, otherwise risking knock-out.
Strong breaths have also been used to reach altered states of consciousness—guided breathwork sessions exist today to help people access parts of their psyche, memories, and creativity that they might not otherwise be able to touch.
Breathe to Calm Your Nerves
Stress reduction is one of the most commonly-used ‘controlled’ breathing experiences we may have. How many times have you taken a big breath, or told someone to, when panic is rising? The old technique of breathing deeply into a paper bag isn’t a party trick, it’s a visual aid and focusing tool to help manipulate the breath, and as such, calm our systems.
One of the quickest ways to influence our nervous systems—the parasympathetic nervous system in particular—is to breathe deeply. Dysfunctional breathing is a hallmark of anxiety disorders, and studies have shown the dramatic impact just a few deep breaths can have on our whole body stress response to real or perceived threats: Cortisol levels drop in our bodies, we’re able to think more clearly, muscles relax, digestion improves and our immune system strengthens.
One of my favourite practices is to breathe in for a count of 3, hold for 5, and breathe out for 8. Regardless of whether you can do the full count or not, focusing on lengthening your exhales longer than your inhales will automatically nourish your rest-and-digest system.
So take a deep breath. Has doom scrolling caused you to breathe shallowly in your upper chest? Let that prana flow into the lower lobes of your lungs in a big balloon breath and feel your shoulders relax.
If you’d like a wonderfully restorative breathwork class, try Tianne’s Rest and Recover: The Power of Breath.
Breathe to Release Emotions and Trauma
In a similar vein, but on a much deeper, somatic (felt in the body) level, breath can help us express our emotions and work through trauma.
We are in some kind of breath state every moment of every day. So let’s entertain the idea that our breaths are not just a separate entity, serving the only function of oxygen delivery and CO2 removal: We’re breathing when we fall in love—what does that breath and body experience feel like? How about when we receive devastating news that literally feels like a punch to the gut? When you’re disappointed or frustrated do you sigh? How does your breath dance when you’re rolling in gales of laughter surrounded by your favourite people? Even animals sigh, cry out, and laugh in their own ways. It’s almost easier for them, as their responses are completely natural, uninhibited by societal values and codes of acceptability.
Did you at some point in your life start stifling your cries or your laugh? Can you feel what this might have done to your breath and your ability to express yourself fully? The inability to self-express has been documented to lead to mental and emotional dysfunction in a myriad of studies—unsurpisingly I’d say.
Many people when they start to practice yoga, pranayama, or other deep breathing practices find that emotions start to bubble up “out of the blue.” If you notice this starts to happen, don’t be alarmed. Some find that tears trickle from their eyes during savasana for years before they finally ebb. This is ok! With the help of the breath, sometimes the expressions that may have at some point been suppressed can ease their way out. If ever you find such feelings too much or overwhelming, reach out to your support team and professionals for help. There’s always a way to work through it.
Similarly, yet generally on the stronger end, trauma attached to these emotions and past experiences start to surface, asking to be dealt with so that they can move on. This is again where breath work can help immensely, generally to calm highly triggered nervous systems. Often deep breathing techniques done with the supervision of a healer (doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist etc.) can help a person revisit traumas but re-write their stories with their breath calm, so that their bodies feel and know a different experience and can move forward in a healthy way. If you’re curious about this avenue of breathwork, reach out to your care providers and local breathwork providers to find specialists in this field. It’s powerful work!
We have a powerful class on the DoYogaWithMe website that uses a strong breathing exercise to release anger. It’s a relatively short exercise with huge benefits that can be practiced time and time again: Release Your Anger.
Breathe for Better Sleep
We’ve all heard how breath patterns change when we sleep, whether it’s shallow and sweet like a baby’s breath, or thunderous and house-shaking like my father’s snore. Getting to that place where we can fall asleep, and sleep more deeply though, is where conscious awareness of our breath can help immensely.
The breath pattern I mentioned earlier, 3-5-8, is one that is often used to help calm a person’s system and prepare for sleep. Similarly, any deeper breathing done for a length of time (say 5 to 20 breaths) can help calm a person’s system enough to slip into sleep.
For those suffering from insomnia - yoga, meditation and breathwork are often recommended or part of a sleep program. Because of the calming effect that helps to down regulate our fight-or-flight nervous system, our hormones and body systems are better able to work in balance and allow us to sleep effectively. Breathwork can be done at bedtime and as part of a wind-down routine, or it can be incorporated into a daily yoga practice–both showing documented results, especially when used longer term.
If you’re struggling to fall asleep, search ‘sleep’ on our search tab for a list of meditations and yoga classes (all of which include breathwork) to help you fall and stay asleep. Or, jump straight to Melissa’s Hatha Yoga For Better Sleep!
Breathe to Meditate
Last but definitely not least, manipulation of the breath often goes hand in hand with meditation. After covering many of the benefits of breathwork and how it influences our systems above, this is not a surprising fact. When we want to calm ourselves so we can quiet our minds, it’s only natural to turn to the breath. When we want to pump ourselves up and activate the full potential of our minds, it also makes sense to use the breath. It’s a powerful tool!
In meditation, the breath is often referred to as the ‘back door’ access to the mind. When we’re able to control and calm our breath, right away our thoughts and emotions tend to follow. This direct connection has been used for centuries by meditation practitioners of all varieties around the world: it really works!
One simple way to use the breath in meditation is to count your inhales and exhales. Sit comfortably with a tall spine, close your eyes and take one big breath cycle to begin. Next time you inhale, count ‘one’, exhale for ‘two’, inhale ‘three’ and so on. Complete your count all the way to ten, then start over. Every time you find you get lost in your thoughts, just return to the last number you remember and continue on. Don’t beat yourself up when your mind wanders–everyone’s does! Over time you’ll find that your focus and attention on the breath can be held longer and longer. Your meditation muscle/mind is strengthening!
Through meditation we often work to connect ourselves to the bigger picture, the whole. One way that the breath helps us do this is by bringing our awareness to the oxygen and CO2 cycle. We are very much connected to nature and the world around us when we breathe. As we release carbon dioxide into the air, we feed the trees, who in turn use this nourishment and convert it to oxygen for us to use. It’s a complete cycle, one we undisputedly rely on and can remind ourselves of and be thankful for. Nothing we do is without consequence for other beings, and we very much need the natural world to survive. It’s a great point to meditate on next time you’re focusing on your breath!
If you’d like to explore meditation more, we have a large selection of guided meditations for you to try, both in audio track and on-demand video format with a variety of teachers and styles to meet your needs.
Hopefully this exploration of the breath has piqued your curiosity in its true ability to impact your life. Certainly the breath will take all of us far–how will you choose to use it?
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