Abdominal Breathing
Let’s try an exercise together. Begin by closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing. Are you:
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breathing rapidly or slowly?
taking deep breaths or shallow breaths?
feeling the breath in the center of your chest, or down around your abdomen?
Most people tend to breathe in a slightly abnormal way, they tend to hold in their stomachs, make little use of their
diaphragm, and breathe using the muscles of their upper chest, neck and shoulders. This is not the most effective
way to get the needed oxygen to our brain and muscles. If you watch babies or animals breathe, you will notice
that they breathe with their whole bodies, their bellies rise and fall with each breath. For some reason, we stop
doing this when we outgrow diapers. No one really knows why.
During times of emotional stress our sympathetic nervous system is stimulated and effects a number of physical
responses. Our heart rate rises, we perspire, our muscles tense and our breathing becomes rapid and shallow. If this
process happens over a long period of time, the sympatheticic nervous system becomes over stimulated leading to an
imbalance that can effect our physical health resulting in inflammation, high blood pressure and muscle pain to name a
few. Consciously slowing our heart rate, decreasing perspiration and relaxing muscles is more difficult than simply
slowing and deepening breathing. The breath can be used to directly influence these stressful changes causing a direct
stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system resulting in relaxation and a reversal of the changes seen with the
stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. We can see how our bodies know to do this naturally when we take a
deep breath or sigh when a stress is relieved.
The good news is that we can relearn how to breathe properly – learning to breathe using our abdomens. This can
help us control our feelings of stress. In fact, abdominal breathing is the single most effective strategy for stress
reduction! A person’s normal breathing rate is 8-12 breaths per minute. But if someone is stressed, or having a
panic attack, they tend to breathe faster (up to 20-30 breaths per minute) and more shallowly. Although we may
seem to be breathing more when this happens, we are not actually get much oxygen in, and the breathing is not as
effective as it could be.
Abdominal breathing means breathing fully from your abdomen or from the bottom of your lungs. It is exactly the
reverse of the way you breathe when you’re anxious or tense, which is typically shallow and high in your chest. If
you’re breathing from your abdomen, you can place your hand on your abdomen and see it actually rise each time
you inhale. You’ll find that abdominal breathing will help you relax any time you are feeling anxious.
To practice abdominal breathing, follow these steps:
1.Place one hand on your abdomen right beneath your rib cage
2. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose into the bottom of your lungs. Your chest should
move only slightly, while your stomach rises, pushing your hand up.
3. When you’ve inhaled fully, pause for a moment and then exhale fully through your mouth. Purse
your lips and imagine that you are blowing on a hot spoonful of soup. As you exhale, just let
yourself go and imagine your entire body going loose and limp. It should take you twice as long
to exhale as it did to inhale.
4. In order to fully relax, take and release ten abdominal breaths. Try to keep your breathing smooth
and regular throughout, without gulping in a big breath or exhaling suddenly.