Deep Breaths

My first exposure to breathing deeply came when I was a runner.  That feels like a former life to me know (though, one I'm trying to get back in touch with), but I remember often hearing during workouts not to forget to breathe.

That seems silly.  Who forgets to breathe?  Especially when we exert ourselves.  And yet, I have caught myself falling into that trap.  I'll catch myself holding my breath during an ab workout or subjecting my body to the effects of panicked, shallow breathing when I'm tired during a run.

These experiences made me more open to the idea that we might not breathe as deeply as we should or, at the least, we could benefit from deeper breathing.  As a society, we have gotten away from simple solutions, and in many ways, we do not believe that simple solutions work.  We have come to a point in time where we think that the answers have to be complicated, and often we just give up. 

Simple solutions do exist, however.  Simple changes to our body posture affect our outlook and mood.  What we eat can make us feel good or bad, physically and emotionally.  And breathing deeply relaxes us. 

We know it does, too.  It is apart of many relaxing and calming strategies.  When we are stressed we are told to take a deep breath.  When we are angry, we should count to ten and breath deeply.  What is interesting to me, is that 1)we often don't take that advice and 2) we don't apply it to other situations.

Breathe deeply one time as you read each of these benefits and assess how true you think it is for you:
Breathing deeply releases tension. 
It is calming. 
It oxygenates the blood, it gives your brain time to catch up to whatever you're thinking about or dealing with and simultaneously gives your brain more oxygen to work with, increasing your ability to think. 
Breathing deeply helps you emotionally while improving your posture.
It boosts energy levels and lifts your mood.

These are benefits you can feel right now.  Think of all the long term benefits for your body and mind that you aren't even aware of!  I've read studies of other benefits, but have not conducted any myself, so I'm sticking with what I can know. 

I've read accounts of people who trained themselves to breath deeply as the default instead of usually taking shallow breaths (until they really needed to catch up, or decided to take a deep breath).  This took a long time, and lots of forgetting, but the basic method was to try to remember to breath deeply more.  Every time you realize you've forgotten to breath deeply, start it up again.  They say it takes six weeks to form a habit, this would take a pretty continuous effort.

There are websites that train people how to breath well.  (MarksDailyApple and Get Fit Guy)  What to look for and how to do better.  Mostly, it just takes focus.  It's easy to tell ourselves that we don't have time to deal with things like breathing, since our bodies seem to be doing alright with how they breath now, but that might be a mistake.  This falls into my "this will probably help me, and certainly won't hurt me, so why not?" category.

As an added benefit, deep breathing is the most basic type of meditation.  To focus on one thing, be aware of it, enjoy it, keep thoughts from wandering.  It's the next best thing to doing nothing.  Meditation is becoming mainstream and there are more and more studies on the benefits to mind and body.

At any rate, what have you got to lose?  Take a deep breath, and then another, and then another.  When you realize you've been forgetting to breath deeply: breath, breath again!