Everyone does it but most people aren’t aware of the benefits of breathing purposefully. Here are 7 benefits of using breathing techniques …
1. Improve Immunity: they increase the amount of oxygen in the body and increase release of toxins within carbon dioxide. More oxygen in cells and tissues helps them function and enables them to fight against infectious bacteria and viruses more efficiently (Kox et al., 2014).
2. Reduce Anxiety: deep breathing helps return heart rate towards normal levels and increases oxygen. This gives the brain signals to ‘unwind’. Regular deep breathing helps to balance the hormones releasing endorphins in the body (Jerath et al., 2015; Decker et al., 2019).
3. Improve Sleep Quality: deep breathing which includes complete exhalation of air out provides better sleep. Breathing detoxifies the body to calm down. Doing this before bed can even help people with insomnia, alongside meditation (Tsai et al., 2014; Jain & Shapiro, 2013).
4. Benefit Cardiovascular Health: Breathing exercises help strengthen the chest muscles and improve blood pressure. Regular deep breathing is also shown to decrease the chances of strokes. (Yan Zou et al., 2017).
5. Improve Concentration/Reaction Time: A simple slow breathing exercise (4 secs in, 6 secs out) significantly improves reaction time due to greater arousal, faster information processing and greater ability to ignore irrelevant distractions (Manandhar & Pramanik, 2019)
6. Reduces Inflammation: Some breathing exercises (i.e., Sheetali Pranayama) help cool the body down. They trigger an evaporating cooling effect within the body, which brings down inflamed, agitated emotions and decrease inflammation in digestive system (Twal et al., 2016)
7. Reduces Addiction Cravings: Simple yogic-style breathing exercises have been shown to reduce addiction cravings in adults within lab studies (Shabab, Sarkar & West, 2013).
