Control Breathing to Control Emotions
Do you remember the last time you were feeling anxious? Do you remember how your body felt when you were feeling stressed? You were probably experiencing your heart pounding, body warming up, and maybe even get sweaty palms or redder face.
When we’re in a stressful situation or feeling anxious, our body releases stress hormone, cortisol, which increases our heart rate to pump more blood throughout our body to prepare for a fight or flight response. This also makes our breath shorter and shallower to supply more oxygen to support our increased heart rate. In other words, our feeling (stress, anxious) is correlated to our heart rate, which is also correlated to our breathing. So if we can control how we breathe, we can control our heart rate, which in turn can help us control our feelings or emotions.
Do you ever wonder why smokers have such a hard time quitting cigarettes? It’s the breathing. If it were just nicotine they’re addicted to, we should’ve been replaced all cigarettes with either nicotine patches or gums or other alternative safer form of nicotine. But people still light up their cigarettes or puff on vapes even though they are aware of its harmful effects because it forces them to slow down their breathing. Smoking forces them to inhale deeper, hold it for a sec or two, and exhale slowly. What does slowing down breathing do to our body? It forces our heart to slow down because there is less oxygen being supplied to its vessels, and when our heart slows down, cortisol, the stress hormone, production also goes down, telling our body to relax, because there is no need to fight or flight. After awhile, their body associates smoking with being relaxed and feeling calm, so most have hard time replacing cigarettes with patches.
So next time you’re feeling a little anxious or in a stressful situation, check to see how you’re breathing. Are you breathing short and shallow or deep and slow? If you want to live a more relaxed, calmer life, check your breathing throughout the day to make sure you’re always breathing slow and deeply.
