Relieve Emotional Pain with This Simple Breathing Technique

Reprogram Your Emotions Using Diaphragmatic Breathing

We are all carrying around a tremendous amount of emotional pain. Emotional pain, such as trauma, anger, sorrow, stress, anxiety, and jealousy is just as real as our physical pain. We have just become accustomed to living with this emotional pain as a normal part of our lives.

What if we started to treat our emotional pain with the same urgency that we treat physical pain like a toothache or a broken arm?

Sounds easy enough, but often it’s harder to identify the root of the emotional pain. This makes it more challenging to alleviate. For instance, during stressful times like a breakup or work overload we might feel anxious, angry, sad, or bitter, but unlike that toothache, we can’t identify where these strong emotions are rooted.

Unlike physical pain which is only ours to feel and carry, emotional pain is often projected onto the people around us. This is a common defense used to temporarily distance ourselves from emotional pain, but it doesn’t solve anything.

Facing our emotional pain is challenging because it forces us to look beneath the surface of our lives and examine areas we normally try to avoid. But this is essential when we are looking to uncover the root of our negative emotions.

Instead of becoming defensive, we begin to resolve issues and see ourselves more clearly. We can begin to discover patterns or triggers that lead to certain emotions and reactions.

Simple breathing techniques could be the answer to a better understanding of the emotional pain we carry.

Learning simple effective breathing techniques is a practical way to manage emotional pain. By becoming aware of our breathing patterns we can begin to recognize and address the source of our emotional pain.

Here’s how…

Breath & Emotions

Our emotions have a direct and immediate effect on our breathing patterns. Think about the last time you felt heartbreak or rage or were completely overwhelmed by a situation. Can you remember how it changed your breathing? Even recalling these hard and often traumatic experiences can start to shift our breathing in the present moment. You might feel your breath become more abrupt, rapid, shallow, and hard. When this happens our nervous system goes into a fight or flight state and the energy of our body is immediately shifted.

Strong emotions alter our breathing and change our energy.

Because we know this information to be true, that means we can use our breath to change our energy and influence our emotions. Why wait for things to get out of control to use this powerful information?

We have never been taught how to breathe properly because we come into this world naturally breathing.

• What if you were born under stressful circumstances?
• What if you live in a home or environment that is hostile or unsafe?
• What if your natural way of breathing is formed out of a constant survival instinct?
• What if the emotional pain you carry feels so natural to you because it is the only breath you know?

The benefits of using breath as a calming and healing agent go back hundreds of years, yet we rarely talk about it. In today’s busy society, we are overworked, anxious, stressed out, and have widespread medical and mental health issues. We are offered a diagnosis and pill for everything, yet we rarely look at the breath to help manage anything and our breath is our link from the internal to the external world.

We’ve all been told to take a few deep breaths, and can feel the immediate effects, so why haven’t we taken a closer look at this built-in healing modality?

Breath Awareness

It begins with noticing our breath. This is the first big hurdle for people to go through. Becoming aware of breath is becoming aware of yourself in this moment and this is a huge ask in our world of over-consumption. It can be very challenging to slow down enough to do this simple (not easy) task.

Breath awareness should be done daily to help make it effective. The good news is it can be done anytime and anywhere by taking a moment to notice the air flowing in and the air flowing out. Three to five rounds of this focus at a red light, or in a long line can bring instant relaxation to a stressful day. Enough to let you know that your body is tense, or your mind has been scattered. This is what breath awareness is. Little by little you will begin to find more clarity in how you show up through this practice. It is the first step in dealing with emotional pain.

Once you begin to practice small bits of breath awareness you will find yourself seeking out more opportunities to do it because it feels so good. You might even be practicing now as you read this.

Your natural rhythm begins to talk to you and tell you when things are out of alignment. The breath begins to whisper to you information about the conditions of your mind and body. You may begin to realize your muscles are tense or your breathing is rigid or tight. You may feel relaxation in the body and ease in the mind you haven’t felt for years.

Belly Breathing

There are endless breathing practices that help strengthen this bridge between your internal and external world, but they all begin with learning how to use your diaphragm: your main breathing muscle. It’s a great practice to start with. The challenge here is that it feels so basic and easy that we forget to show up and do the work.

• Sit crisscross or hips to heels on a meditation pillow or lay flat on your back.
• Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest.
• Close your eyes, soften your belly, and bring your attention to the tip of your nose.
• Feel the sensation of air moving through your nostrils as you draw the air in and the release of warmer air as you exhale out.
• Begin to recognize where you’re naturally breathing.
• Notice how it feels to breathe in this moment.
• Let your breath begin to flow deep into your abdomen as you allow your belly to expand and round with every inhale.
• With every exhale feel this natural contraction of your belly towards your spine.
• Notice your breath begins to slow and deepen with each round.
• Observe all sensations traveling with your breath.
• Continue watching your breath for 7–10 rounds

Do this every day for a week and you will observe your entire body breathing. You will become aware of the calm associated with the stillness in your body. That your thoughts start to float by with less urgency, and that you naturally release tension from the mind and body with every exhale.

Putting Your Breath To Work

Once you have more control over your breath you will naturally begin to use it in your daily life. In moments of anger or sorrow where you might usually have a strong emotional reaction, you will notice your breath, your energy, and your heightened awareness and begin to use your newfound knowledge to induce a more healthy responsive approach to your situation.

A daily breath practice will give you an opportunity to approach your emotional pain from a more responsive dialog with yourself.

Emotional pain took years to develop and isn’t likely going to go away after one or two five-minute breath sessions. A good strategy is to adopt a daily breath practice that helps you to consistently shift and reprogram the nervous system. Not only will this reduce your stress but you will feel more in control of your thought process and the emotions that follow.

By dedicating 5 minutes a day to consciously focusing on your breath you will deepen the release of tension from the body and show up in more alignment and be able to respond to life situations instead of reacting.

It’s time to stop hiding our emotional pain. It’s time to do something about it. It’s time to relieve it through your breath.