Breathwork
What Is Breathwork?
– The top of the totem pole to balance physiology & influence nervous system
Breathwork is the use of Breathing Awareness and Conscious Breathing for healing and growth, personal awakening and transformation in spirit, mind, and body.
Breathwork is a form of self-improvement and personal development. It is a self-help, self-healing method in natural medicine.
Breathwork is a major skill set that high-performing and successful individuals have mastered. It is the secret ingredient that puts them exactly where they want to be.
The unchanging and constant goal of respiration is oxygenation of the blood.
Breathing Mechanism
– The highest control system
Breathing is the highest control system in the hierarch mechanism of the physical body. All of our physiological systems are dependent on breathing. If we are not getting enough air/oxygen into our blood system, it can trigger alarm systems in our body.
Breathing is mostly unconscious and automatic. It influences our actions and our emotions and at the same time it is influenced by them. But the wonderful thing about breathing is we can also consciously influence our breathing, in a voluntary manner, by changing it in various ways with positive consequences on many different levels, especially blood flow.
• Breathing may change to accompany another action – e.g., lifting a heavy weight.
• Breathing may change with our emotions.
• Breathing may change if body is more tense or more relaxed.
• Breathing can help modify the sensation of pleasure or pain.
• Breathing can help speaking or singing voice carry better.
• Breathing can help active organs.
Breathwork for Breathing Dysfunctions
When breathing is below par, it creates problems throughout the systems of the body. Breathing too much can stimulate the sympathetic nervous system or “fight or flight” reaction system. Being in a chronic state of over breathing can stimulate anxiety, asthma, and fatigue. When we look at the Traditional Chinese Medicine system all meridians derive their capacity for energy from breathing and therefore if breathing is affected our energy, flow, and our pump systems all can get affected.
Breathing pattern disfunctions are becoming more and more common and the list of conditions that are related to this is extensive:
• Muscle spasms
• Anxiety
• Asthma
• Obesity
• Brain fog
• Fatigue
• Congestion trouble
• Sleeping trouble
• Detoxification issues
• Neurological issues
Since breathing is a natural process and so vital to life, why do we all breathe so differently? The answer is that breathing habits are greatly influenced by lifestyle, environment, and genetic predisposition. Everyday habits that may come from choice or necessity (such as sedentary deskwork, watching TV, eating processed foods, and excessive talking) or from psychological conditions (such as stress and anxiety) or hormonal changes that occur during the female monthly cycle can result in persistent faulty breathing, along with all its negative consequences.
Here is a simple example of how lifestyle can affect our breathing:
Breathing is extremely important to maintain the PH levels in the body. Poor breathing mechanics can make you over alkaline or over acidic.
Eating a highly processed food diet causes us to hyperventilate because highly processed foods bring too much sugar into the body and makes it acidic, so the body increases your breathing rate to alkaline the body which also creates more fatigue and pushes you more into a state of poor metabolic health.
Impaired Breathing Habits Affect Our Whole Body Negatively
Impaired breathing habits may produce many seemingly unrelated negative consequences for our health and wellbeing. Where the problem will arise in our body depends on what our individual weaknesses are. Breathwork will help.
What Happens In Our Body When We Breathe Ineffectively
1. Poor breathing reduces oxygen delivery to the tissues in the body, causing fatigue, cravings, brain fog and emotional outbursts.
2. Energy deficiency occurs due to low oxygen uptake by the cells. Our cells lose their ability to produce sufficient energy to perform work at normal level. The cells become stressed and are forced into prioritizing survival over development and growth.
3. Our Nervous System becomes inefficient. Breathing dysfunction will cause the central nervous system or conscious mind to work a little slower and perceive incoming stimuli as slightly more stressful and threatening. Our automatic functions like heartbeat, digestion etc. also suffer and become impaired.
4. Ineffective breathing causes the heart to work harder. Your heart is a major consumer of oxygen, and a reduced oxygen supply means the heart is not able to pump blood as effectively as it should. Breathing dysfunction reduce carbon dioxide and nitric oxide which are both dilaters of our blood vessels. A reduced oxygen supply and dilaters puts the heart under a lot of stress considering there are 100,000km of blood vessels it must maintain.
How To Breath?
Breathing during rest should be a light movement, almost imperceptible, and never noticeable. Healthy breathing during rest should be through the nose and driven by the diaphragm. It should be regular, quiet, slow, and almost undetectable. Unhealthy or dysfunctional breathing involves breathing through the mouth, using the upper chest, or breath that is irregular or audible during rest.
At Zing True Health Clinic our Breathwork Practitioners assess every client’s breathing and implement breathing practices and programmes for our clients. The wonderful thing about breathwork is it is transformational and 100% free. So, start today use your nose to breathe and see the changes.