Calm your breath to help deal with stress. Here is a video to help you quickly and effectively shift to a calmer you! I explain the mechanics and the science of a Cadence breath and lead you through it.
What the heck is proper breathing? What did you just do right now when I said that? Did you take a big breath?
We live in a society where we are told that big breathing is better breathing and more breathing and breathing a lot is a good thing. It actually is not. And a good example would be, When you’re driving in your car and you park your car, would you rev your engine when you’re parked? You probably wouldn’t do that. That would be stressful for your car and stressful for the engine.
Breathing too much during the day is akin to revving your engine when you’re in park. And you wouldn’t do that if you knew that that actually is stressful for your heart and stressful for your body.
It also stimulates a stress response. So better breathing would be when you’re at rest, would be a light, slow, calm breath. Easier said than done sometimes. So I’m going to tell you how to get there, how to get to a slow, light, easy breath.
There’s something called cadence breathing. where you breathe in for a certain period of time and breathe out for a certain period of time. And so the ideal breath when you’re at rest is about six to eight breaths a minute.
Quite often, we are breathing in this stressful environment. In modern society, we’re told that we have to be productive every minute of the day. And I think, unfortunately, that gets us into a revved up state of mind and it gets us to hyperventilate or generally breathe too much, too fast or too big.
So a light breath would look really would not look like a lot. You wouldn’t see someone lifting their shoulders when they take a breath. You wouldn’t see a lot of sighing. You wouldn’t feel your chest and your belly doing dramatic movements.
In a calm breath, you don’t see a whole lot. It’s very subtle because the diaphragm takes over the work and the other muscles that are involved in breaths, let’s say when you’re exercising, are not active.
So a slow light breath would be something like, and you can follow me here, would be an inhale for four seconds, in and out breath for six seconds. So it would look a little bit like this. In for one, two, three, out for two, three, four, five, six. In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, five, six. In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, five, six.
Now, if you can do this, when you’re, let’s say, driving or when you’re waiting in line or moments where you have to wait for something or pause or taking these little mini breaks when you’re working just for a couple of minutes. If you can just do this, it’s called a cadence breath, where you’re breathing in and breathing out for a certain amount of time to slow the breath down. Ideally, you want it to not be dramatic.
At first, because you won’t be used to it, you will find yourself maybe hauling in a lot more air than you need. So as you do it, look for something that’s very subtle, very light, almost kind of like a restful breath. If you could imagine a wave along a shore, a slow like a tide going in and out. And if you can imagine that slow tide, it’s a very much an internal movement and doesn’t involve a lot of chest or a lot of belly or a lot of lifting, but very quiet and very subtle so that you’re not stressing your body or stressing your system.
It’ll get easier over time And if you repeat it throughout the day for a minute or two, whenever you get a chance, you’ll start noticing that you’re a little less stressed, you’re calmer in general, your breathing is a little more even, and you’ll be able to handle challenges that come at you a little bit easier. So give that a try.
My name is Fariya Doctor, and I am a Feldenkrais practitioner and a Buteyko instructor. So if you’re needing some special instruction or some assistance with some breathing challenges, please reach out. You can find me here at fariyadoctor.com.