I finally understand why people do breathwork. Not that I do breathwork per se, where I use specific breathing techniques, but I’ve been doing deep and intentional breathing as part of my daily exercises. All I can say is wow, wow, wow. It’s wild to me that something I do every day can be such a big part of my healing and wellness if I just do it and do it right. Yes, apparently there is a wrong way of breathing that can negatively affect your body, and a right way to do that can improve your physical and emotional health.
Breathing through your mouth, breathing from your chest, or breathing shallow all can have a negative effect on how you feel because of the toxins allowed in through the mouth, the obstruction of your airways that impact neurological functions and metabolism amongst other things. But breathing through your nose, breathing from your diaphragm, or taking deep calm breaths can limit the intake of toxins, calm your nervous system and limit the stress hormones from releasing into your body. For someone like me that is healing an autoimmune condition, being about to calm my nervous system is especially vital.
Take yesterday as an example. By the time I logged off from work the pain in my back had reached a level of painful burning, my knees were aching, and overall, I just felt shitty. I decided to tap, but I concentrated heavily on my breathing. I noticed my muscles relax, my shoulders fall, my thoughts slow down, the pain subside, and my head clear, and my level of energy increase. After about 30 minutes of tapping and 15 minutes of meditation where I focused on nasal breathing and getting more air flow into my body, I got up feeling completely restored.
My doctor told me that I needed to keep my stress down, but I haven’t really found a good way to do that unless it was a matter of eliminating an obvious source of stress—and eliminating the obvious sources aren’t always an option. I know there are many ways to deal with stress, but I have never experienced such immediate and tangible results from anything like I have with breathing. I’ll eventually dive deeper into the many breathing techniques, but for now I’m going to just focus on building the habit of breathing through my nose and using it as a tool for healing and a better quality of life.