What is the Purpose of Breathing Exercises?

Breathing is a natural body function that is often just running in the background of your day. So why is there so much hype around performing breathing exercises? Conscious awareness of breath and intentionally altering the patterns of your breath have profound effects on decreasing muscular tension, improving sleep, decreasing stress levels, and improving clarity of thought.

How does this work? Conscious awareness of your breath and breathing exercises are a powerful tool in shifting your nervous system from a state of fight/flight/free to a state of rest/digest/restore. All processes in your body including your heartrate, digestion, regulation of organ function, sexual arousal, and many others are controlled by your autonomic nervous system. Within the autonomic nervous system, there are two branches: the sympathetic (flight, flight, freeze) and the parasympathetic (rest, digest, restore). Daily stressors including work, family, or current events contribute to chronically high stress levels, which shifts the autonomic nervous system into a sympathetic response.

Intentionally changing the rhythm of your breath stimulates the vagus nerve (an integral part of the parasympathetic nervous system) to then trigger the parasympathetic system (rest, digest, restore) to become stimulated. This shifts your mind and body into a state of relaxation, healing, and clarity.

Breathing exercises are effective for not only their physiological quality in shifting the nervous system into a restorative state, but also for their ability to shift your mind into a meditative state. The meditative properties of breathing promote the release of hormones in the brain including dopamine, DHEA, endorphins, serotonin, GABA, and many others. These are responsible for improved sleep, improved focus, increased mood, and a feeling of calm and happy.

Just like Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz’ always had her ruby slippers to return home, you too have a powerful tool with you at all times to bring your mind and body “back home”... your breath.