Breathing Consciously
Reduces Stress

As I move through my daily life now, I have a different way about me, a different pace. I’m living and even working using my own life force energy instead of living on adrenaline.

I realized it fully again when I was crossing the street at a crosswalk the other day. The vehicle that had stopped for me honked their horn, even though I really wasn’t moving that slowly. I had to laugh because I absolutely loved the fact that a few years ago, I was the one that would have honked that horn because I was always in a hurry - but not anymore!

I’m living life differently now and it’s been quite a journey. It doesn’t feel like anything is a CRISIS anymore. All the therapies I do as a practitioner are the therapies that helped me get to this place. For years, I have also incorporated breathing consciously into all the therapies as it profoundly helps clients as it did me.

Breathing on purpose, consciously, is a necessity for health as it reduces stress. It isn’t easy at first especially when you are an adrenaline junky like I was, but it’s free so keep trying.

Breathing enriches our blood. It can affect whether our cells are degenerating or regenerating. It’s a proven stress reliever for pain and muscle tightness plus it improves the function of every organ system in your body. Taoists have proven results that ‘bone breathing’ even increases your bone density.

It’s a crying shame that our respiratory system automatically breathes for us without our conscious involvement. If we had to consciously breathe each breath, we would not hold onto stress as it would be released each time we inhaled and exhaled. This is significant when you consider that stress causes 97% of all disease or illness according to the latest medical studies.

You could live weeks without food, days without water but only a few minutes without the oxygen obtained from breathing. Oxygen is, without question, your most vital nutrient so why not inhale extra, obscene amounts of it on purpose, by choice?

Of all our bodily functions, breathing is the only one that can be controlled both automatically and consciously. When breathing is directed consciously by you, it enhances and improves every bodily function, relieves stress inside and out, helps you let go of that crisis feeling of anxiety, reduces anger, fear, old hurts, releases tightness and gets you out of your head and back into your body so you can really show up in your own life.

The digestive system is a perfect example of the benefits of conscious breathing. It’s the first and primary system that stress can destroy by preventing absorption of nutrients and elimination of waste/toxins.

The “Enteric Nervous System” (ENS) is the 2^nd brain of the body and is located in the tissue that lines your entire digestive system including your esophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine. If you are stressed the digestive system is already tight and contracted so digestion won’t happen optimally or easily.

Breathing gives the ENS the emotional signal that all is well so it can relax and that allows essential peristalsis to happen (wavelike motions of movement by muscles in the lining of the digestive tract that are essential for nutritional absorption and elimination of toxins/wastes).

You can reset your own Autonomic Nervous System by breathing consciously. Breathing consciously allows the parasympathetic nervous system (relaxed state of being) a chance to engage, which disengages the sympathetic (fight or flight way of existing). Change only happens when you make a conscious choice.

Biofeedback training can help you. It really gives you an awareness of how stress is affecting you, how it may be stopping your breath and helps get it restarted so you can get to a place where breathing is easy and allowed.

Reducing stress and providing profound awareness is what breathing consciously and Biofeedback have in common. They will shift the old programming to empowerment, healing and well-being.

One client, Donna (37 years old), stated that she felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest after her first biofeedback session - she could breathe again! After her second session a few days later, she reported her anxiety was reduced by at least 90%, allowing her to breathe into her whole body again.

Biofeedback identifies where you hold your stress, your breath, trauma, degeneration and more. It then provides frequencies through a complex computer matrix to retrain or balance where the stress is. It sends specific frequencies (that it identifies you need to reduce your stress on all levels) to your body, mind and spirit through wristlets, anklets and a headband. It’s the most profoundly relaxing and rejuvenating experience you’ll ever have.

Biofeedback helps to train your body to be relaxed and to process stress differently in your life. There are over 11,000 frequencies available that your body knows electronically. There are over 850 screens, encompassing anything the body, mind and spirit need in order to reach a stress free state and truly live the peaceful life we were meant to have. It also helps with the undigested or unfelt emotions that may come up during your breathing exercises.

Here are a few breathing techniques I use with clients during therapies. You may want to set a timer initially so your head won’t start running your ‘to do list’ like mine used to. You’ll feel a profound difference even starting with three minutes.

The Basics: Sit in a chair or lie down. Start by inhaling and exhaling making each breath slower, easier and longer. Counting keeps your brain occupied with focusing on the breathing instead of worrying about other things. Count to five on the inhale and five on your exhale. The brain is not an easy thing to ignore, so let any thoughts that appear just pass by - no judgment. Just breathe, observe and gently bring focus back to your breath each time that happens by starting the counting again.

Unwinding the Body: Start inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your slightly open mouth, several times, again to a count of five. Now, place your hand on your chest and inhale your breath to where your hand is resting. Remember slow and easy. Breathe numerous times until you feel your breath moving your hand on your body. Then, move your hand lower and breathe into that location a few times also. Play with it, moving your hands to your abdomen, on your low back or even on your adrenals (mid back area). Keep your hand in each spot until your breath can find that target, then experiment in another place.

Alternate-Hemisphere Breathing: This is great to do at work or even when sitting in your car. It clears the cobwebs. Sitting is easiest for this one. Start by inhaling deeply through both nostrils at the same time and then exhaling.

Begin the alternate-hemisphere breathing by closing off your right nostril (with your thumb or finger, by pushing the outside of your nose to the inside bridge, so you can’t breathe through it at all). Then inhale with your left nostril only, slowly and deeply, to a count of five as you breathe in. Then close off your left nostril too and hold your breath for a count of five.

Then release the right side nostril – exhaling slowly, fully. Without pausing, keep your left nostril closed as you inhale to a count of five with your right nostril, then close off the right nostril too, holding your breath for a count of five. Then, exhale through your left nostril. Without pausing, inhale through your left nostril and you just keep repeating this for several minutes to feel more alert.

The next time someone asks you a question, stop before you answer the question and take a breath, or two, or more. You can then answer from your truth, what you really feel and not what you think. Your answer may even surprise you when it comes from your being and not your brain!

Norma Hope is a Certified Biofeedback Specialist, Certified Colon Hydrotherapist, Lymph Therapist, NeuroAcoustic Sound Therapist, Microcurrent Therapist, Thought Field Therapist and more… Call 780-477-1100.