Deep Breathing for Stress Relief
By Harvard Health Publications
Breathe in deeply to a count of four and out again slowly. There. Don’t you feel calmer?
Most of us are familiar with the term “fight or flight,” also known as the stress response. It’s what the body does as it prepares to confront or avoid danger. The brain signals hormones that rouse us to action. Breathing quickens to take in more oxygen, the heart beats faster, blood pressure rises, muscles tighten, and senses sharpen. When appropriately invoked, the stress response helps us rise to many challenges. It allows us to avoid an impending accident and help rescue people in a disaster. But trouble starts when this response is constantly provoked by less momentous, day-to-day events, such as money woes, traffic jams, job worries, or relationship problems.
Health problems are one result. A prime example is high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease. The stress response also suppresses the immune system, increasing susceptibility to colds and other illnesses. Moreover, the buildup of stress can contribute to anxiety and depression. Often people try to relieve the pressure by self-medicating with alcohol or drugs, or develop bad habits like smoking or overeating.
We can’t avoid all sources of stress in our lives, nor would we want to. But we can develop healthier ways of responding to them. One way is to invoke the relaxation response, through a technique first developed in the 1970s at Harvard Medical School by cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson. The relaxation response is the opposite of the stress response. It’s a state of profound rest that can be elicited in many ways, including meditation, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation.
In meditation, for example, heartbeat and respiration slow, the body’s rate of oxygen consumption drops steeply, and blood lactate levels, which some researchers believe are linked to panic attacks, decline markedly. Blood pressure stabilizes in healthy people and drops in people with hypertension.
Breath focus is a common feature of several techniques that evoke the relaxation response. The first step is learning to breathe deeply.
The benefits of deep breathing
Deep breathing also goes by the names of diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing, belly breathing, and paced respiration, which can be used to help relieve hot flashes. When you breathe deeply, the air coming in through your nose fully fills your lungs, and the lower belly rises. It’s an inborn skill that often lies dormant. Reawakening it allows you to tap into one of your body’s strongest self-healing mechanisms.
Yet for many of us, deep breathing seems unnatural. There are several reasons for this. For one, body image has a negative impact on respiration in our culture. A flat stomach is considered attractive, so women (and men) tend to hold in their stomach muscles. This interferes with deep breathing and gradually makes shallow “chest breathing” seem normal, which increases tension and anxiety.
