Breathwork - an ancient practice that has gone viral

Breathwork has been used in ancient traditions for thousands of years but has gotten a lot of attention the past years due to its proven benefits on our physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing. Who would have thought that something as simple as becoming aware of your own breathing pattern and changing it could change your mood within just a few minutes?

So what is breathwork exactly?

It is any sort of breathing technique where you change or control your breathing pattern. Where you take control over your automatic nervous system. It is often referred to as an active meditation, where you end up in a meditative state without having to sit in silence meditating, trying to fight your thoughts off. Meditation can be daunting and frustrating to many people and this is where Breathwork comes in and steals the show – it’s a high impact, low-effort short cut to self regulation and is accessible to everyone. You don’t need to be “enlightened” or even have an interest in spirituality to perform breathwork. Everyone who has a pair of lungs can perform breathwork and everyone will achieve some kind of effect from it. Breathwork helps us to connect to our emotions and physical body vs our mind and thoughts. And we do need to get out of our own head sometimes!

3 powerful breathing techniques:

Circular Diaphragmatic / Belly breathing Have you ever noticed that babies and children breathe with their bellies? That’s because they are using their diaphragm which is our major muscle of respiration. Imagine the diaphragm like a parachute that can unfold massively when activated. This is the most efficient way of breathing and helps to quiet the secondary muscles of respiration: upper chest, shoulders, back and neck. Unfortunately as we get older, we lose this connection to our own breath and we start breathing with our chest, often shallow and rapid breathing due to increased stress levels, respiratory diseases, allergies and obesity. So we lose the natural way of breathing and start to breathe in a poor way which puts a toll on our bodies. This often leads to an increase of inflammatory proteins that swarm around the body even when there’s no threat or injury for them to remedy which leads to chronic inflammations. Chronic inflammations is one of the biggest threats to human life at the moment, 3 of 5 people die due to chronic inflammatory diseases like stroke, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disorders, cancer, obesity, and diabetes.

How to practice: 1. Sit or lie down comfortably 2. Relax your upper chest, shoulders back and neck 3. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose. As you inhale your abdomen should rise 4. Exhale through your mouth by simply letting go of the breath, in a “sigh of relief” and relax your whole body 5. Repeat for 10 – 20 – 30 breaths depending on how much time you’ve got

Circular belly breathing with breath holds This breathing technique has gotten a lot of attention lately due to dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete Wim Hof bringing it to the surface after he modernized an ancient technique called Tummo breathing. So if you would hold your breath right now you would probably feel the urge to breathe within just 20-30 seconds, maybe even less. This is due to that our carbon dioxide levels in the blood become too high, not due to low oxygen levels. When our carbon dioxide levels become high we start to feel a stress response in the body, but this is a short term stress that actually is good for us compared to the long term stress we walk around with every day. The health benefits of Co2 are many and I will go through them in a future blog post.

How to practice: 1. Sit or lie down comfortably 2. I like to start with breath-awareness before I take control over my breathing. Which simply is that you let your breathing pattern be just as it is but you start to pay full attention to it, noticing where you feel the breath, if it’s shallow or deep, fast or slow paced. 3. Start to inhale slowly and deeply through your nose, abdomen rising. 4. Exhale through your mouth in a sigh of relief, passive exhalation, abdomen dropping. 5. Repeat for 30-60 breaths 6. Exhale completely and retain your breath on empty lungs for as long as you can. We want to stay calm and relaxed in the stress and stay in the breath hold, not giving up as soon as we start feeling discomfort. 7. When the urge to breathe gets too strong, you take a slow deep and controlled breath in through your nose and retain the breath on full lungs for about 15-20 seconds.

This is 1 round of breathing – repeat for 3-5 rounds and end the session is relaxation. You should try to make time for at least 5 min relaxation after the breathing session. This is because a lot of insights and emotions can come up during breathwork and you need some time to process it afterwards, also you will feel so relaxed that you don’t really want to move out of it too quickly.

Breath of Fire This breathing technique involves passive, normal inhalations and powerful, rapid exhalations. This breathing technique may help reduce stress, boost brain function, and improve respiratory health. It’s also said to strengthen the abdominal muscles and improve digestion. This is a breathing method that I like to perform in the morning as it lights your inner fire, heating your body up from the inside and increases your energy levels.

How to practice: 1. Start in a seated cross-legged position. Sit up tall. Hands on your knees and palms facing up. You can also place a hand on your belly to feel it rise as you breathe. 2. Inhale through your nose, feeling your belly expand as you do so. 3. Without pausing, exhale forcefully through your nose while contracting your abdominal muscles. Keep your inhales and exhales equal in length. Repeat until you’re comfortable with the pattern. 4. Continue the rhythm, inhaling passively and exhaling forcefully. Repeat several times to practice. 5. Now, speed up the inhales and exhales. Your exhales should be powerful and loud. 6. Repeat for 30 seconds to 1 min. 7. At the end I like to exhale completely and retain my breath on empty lungs. 8. When the urge to breathe gets too strong, take a controlled inhale and retain the breath for about 15-20 seconds.

Try it out and let me know what you think. And the next time you feel upset, angry, sad, stressed or anxious – start paying attention to your breathing pattern, take control over it and see what happens. I try to do this many times during the day. Something as simple as taking a very deep conscious breath and letting it go in a sigh of relief can have a great impact on your mood. ♡

Often, the depth of our breathwork practice is heightened in a group setting led by a certified breathwork facilitator. You can explore all my available classes here.