5 Ways Breathwork Can Drastically Improve Your Mental Health.
Your Mental Health Matters
Mental Health matters because it affects every aspect of your life. From how you think and feel, to how you show up and interact with the world around you. It is the foundation of how you experience this one precious life. When you prioritize your mental health you build the resilience to withstand stress more effectively. It is the central point for finding emotional balance that keeps you productive, and positive. Neglecting your mental health can lead you down the road to overwhelm, anxiousness, depression or worse.
Just like you must continue to improve your physical health by exercising and making positive food choices, regular attention and care need to be given to your mental health as well. When you decide you are ready to be happier, and healthier and start owning your experience to find deeper meaning and connect, then you are making the first brave step toward living to your fullest potential.
“The hardest part about change is not making the same choice you did yesterday.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza
Breathwork is a powerful way to combat your mental health. By raising your energy levels and feeling into the tension surrounding your thoughts you can begin to reprogram yourself into a new way of being. Breathwork is a great place to start because when you decide you want better, the hardest thing to do is start. Breathwork makes starting simple.
Here are 5 ways in which breathwork can drastically improve your mental health.
- Balance Your Nervous System
We have an endless world of distractions at our fingertips that keep us overwhelmed and scattered. Breathwork helps you to find that sense of inner calm and focus that transports you out of your head full of worry, deadlines, and responsibilities to a place of balance. With mindful breathing practices such as coherent breathing, you can hit the breaks on your mind-chatter and begin to restore balance to your nervous system.
Finding balance in your nervous system takes work because when your mental health is suffering, being calm might feel like an unfamiliar or scary place; like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. But by practicing slow-centered breathing and getting more familiar with your natural cycles your nervous system will naturally flow into balance along with your thoughts and emotions.
2. Change Your Internal Chemistry
Breathwork helps move stagnant air (Prana/Qi/Energy) from the body. This helps release feel-good hormones. A daily dose of endorphins compounds quickly, leaving you with a new perspective that isn’t just temporary. Mental health issues like depression leave you feeling unfocused and energy drained, this affects your performance, and how you relate to those around you. Breath practices like circular breathing create a hermetic stress in your body that helps jump-start your immune system, alert your brain, and create a pharmacy of chemicals that improve your mood and lessen feelings of depression.
Feel like jump-starting this change? Sign up for a cold dip. Utilizing your breath and then getting in the cold is the perfect way. You can always turn the shower to cold for a minute or so too and begin to explore the benefits.
3. Get Quality Sleep
Chronic Stress and burnout are huge factors in today’s world. When you are living in a state of stress you aren’t getting the quality of sleep your body needs to rest and repair. Because of this, we tend to numb out on endless doom scrolling from bed and beige watching TV. This adds to the problem by continuing to feed your mind with outside input.
Getting a quality night’s sleep helps us to function better because you get in flow with your circadian rhythm. Slow deep breathing like 4x8 helps you to slow down and shift into a parasympathetic state. This lowers your heart rate, relaxes your muscles, and quiets the mind. All this prepares the body for rest. When you feel more rested you think clearer and make better choices.
4. Lower’s Stress Levels
Being alive in our modern world is stressful enough, add any mental health concerns to that and burnout becomes a no-brainer. One of the best ways to combat the stress of daily life is through the breath.
Instead of your day taking you for a ride, breathwork puts you back in the driver’s seat.
Fundamental breathing practices can be done almost anytime and anywhere and are essentially a way to press a pause button on your day and reset your mind. Not only is this good for finding more clarity, but it also lowers your risk for long-term health issues like heart disease.
Breathwork is the perfect tool for helping you to see outside of your circumstances and opens you to make more productive decisions about how to spend your energy. Triangle breathing is a soothing way to lower stress before any challenging conversation or conflict resolution.
5. Change Your Breath, Change Your World
The way you breathe is connected to how you’re feeling. If you are in a cycle of thinking negatively, your breath will reflect that. You will be more tired, you’ll move slowly, and your breath will be shallow. This breathing and this feeling affect the kind of thoughts you think and your thinking will determine the actions you take. By consciously focusing on your breathing you begin to move outside of your thoughts and into how you feel. Although this can feel challenging while dislodging tension in the body, soon you will feel more at ease. In turn, you will notice yourself thinking more positively, feeling more open, and spending your day on more productive things.
Your breath really can change the direction of your life. The trick is to practice consistently. 15 minutes of mindful breathing meditation every day can help you achieve these new patterns of breath.
Your Mental Health Matters
What you breathe out others breathe in. We are all living in a beginningless cycle of offering out and receiving in. We are mirrors of the life and world around us. Your mental health not only affects your world, it truly has an impact on the world around you as well. We all need each other, and it’s more important than ever to speak out and up about how you’re doing. Instead of isolating, we must voice the shame and insecurities we feel. This takes their power over us away and allows those around us to share in our pain and help lift us from the muck.
I have been struggling with my mental health. I know that without my daily breathwork practice, I would be in poor shape. I have a lot of shame around the idea that I preach the wonders of breathwork and still find myself in low tides of energy, and self-worth. I know I still have a lot of work to do, and I know my vulnerability is my strength, but it doesn’t make it any easier to show up vulnerable.
If you are struggling with your mental health, I hope one of these tools works for you. Please know that you are a worthy human and seek help if you need it. The world needs you as there is one like you out there who can do the uniquely wonderful things you can do. Call 988-LIFELINE to be connected to a crisis center in your area.
Breath well my friend.
