How you breathe can fundamentally affect your mental state and the way you feel. James Nestor in his book Breath: The New Science of a lost Art, argues that many of us have got into the habit of bad breathing. Imagine the office worker opening up her emails in the morning and finding 150 emails waiting to be answered. Immediately, she reverts to upper chest, shallow breathing. She sighs a lot, her breathing becomes irregular and even after the initial stress has passed, this breathing pattern can become habitual and put her into a long-term stress response. This dysfunctional breathing pattern then impacts behaviours like sleep, giving her a racing mind, inducing panic attacks, causing stiff neck and shoulders(because she is using her upper chest and neck muscles to breath more than her diaphragm) and making it difficult for her to fully relax. She has breathed her way into a “fight or flight” response.
Continue reading “FEELING ANXIOUS? THE WAY YOU BREATH COULD HELP”
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