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Air Breathe Exercise
Pranayama, the art of breathing correctly, is an ancient yogic exercise that
practitioners believe can relieve stress, enhance creativity, combat insomnia, reduce aggression, lift depression, and much more. Now modern science is confirming many of these claims.The average set of lungs is about the size of two footballs, but most people use only a third of that capacity, and in doing so, they lose what many experts say, is one of the greatest stress-reduction tools at their disposal.
“Slowing breath down and breathing to the bottom of our lungs begins to reverse the cascade of stress hormones and lower heart rate and blood pressure," says James S. Gordon, MD, founder and director of the Washington D.C. -based Centre for Mind.
Gordon has put these notions to a demanding test. For the past dozen years, he has taught breathing techniques and other methods of reducing stress to schoolchildren, medical school faculty, and health-care professionals in trouble spots around the world, including Bosnia, Kosovo, and most recently, Israel. In Kosovo, Gordon says, a combination of breathing exercises and other relaxation techniques was taught to 128 high school students, 88 per cent of whom were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. After the 6-week training, only 35 per cent still were.
Richard P. Brown, MD, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, who claims Pranayama "can do in 20 hours what I can't do in 10 years with people," summed up the results of dozens of breathing studies in the Journal of
Alternative and Complementary Medicine. “Merely by controlling their breathing patterns, he found, people could significantly reduce levels of the stress hormone Cortisol, improve sleep, and relieve depression.”The studies Brown examined included several techniques you might find in yoga
Class. In one exercise, loud breathing, you breathe in and out through your nose while tightening your larynx, so that you emit a long, continuous snore-like sound. In another, you breathe forcefully and fast through the nose, taking a breath every second or so. But you don't have to get that fancy, Gordon says. "Simply setting aside a time to pay attention to and focus on the breath can change the way you look at the world, making you more relaxed and expansive, less defensive and fearful." It's easy to backslide, though. "We sit at the computer and tense up, we get in an argument and hold our breath," Gordon says. It takes practice — working the '„ lungs just as you'd work a set of muscles - before breathing deeply and well becomes second nature.