Rooted Yoga and Wellness is now Rooted Holistic Center
308 White Horse Pike, Haddon Heights, New Jersey 08035, United States
Breathwork
Breathwork involves intentionally controlling the way you breathe to directly influence your body’s inner workings, reducing stress and anxiety, increasing calm, and encouraging well-being. Breathwork is a holistic, mind-body approach to mental health and well-being. It can be done simply and on your own, or it can be structured and part of a formal program.
Breathwork is a practice that has evolved over thousands of years. Pranayamic breathing, or intentional breath control, has been a facet of yoga since its origins over 2000 years ago, and it has long existed outside of formal yoga practice.1 People still study and practice it today, and formal types of breathwork programs continue to be developed as people seek to harness its healing potential in specific ways.
The underlying philosophy of breathwork is that intentionally changing the way you breathe can directly affect your autonomic nervous system: deactivating the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) responsible for the fight or flight reaction and activating the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) associated with the rest-and-digest, calm response. Controlled, intentional breathing, often in the form of slow, deep breaths, leads to greater awareness of our emotions and thoughts, improves our flow of energy, and can improve both physical and mental health.
How Breathing Affects the Brain & Body
The human brain constitutes a mere 2% of our total body weight yet consumes about 20% of the oxygen we take in when we breathe. It needs a consistent and plentiful oxygen supply to operate smoothly for our physical and mental health. The brain interprets a low oxygen supply—the result of shallow, rapid breathing—as a threat or danger, and it activates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).
When we breathe improperly—breathing too shallowly and rapidly, which is referred to as chest breathing—our oxygen and carbon dioxide levels become unbalanced, and our sympathetic nervous system remains activated. Voluntary, controlled slow and deep breathing, which is one method of breathing enhanced by breathwork, resets the autonomic nervous system, boosts the brain’s oxygen supply, lowers carbon dioxide levels in the blood, slows brain wave activity, and facilitates coordinated, calm activity throughout the systems of the body.
What Conditions Can Breathwork Help With?
Consistently practicing breathwork affects our entire physiology and not only helps us feel calm temporarily but can keep us calm and composed even in stressful moments.
Breathwork can help with a variety of conditions, including:
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Depression
- Anger
- Agitation
- Grief
- General mood management
- Performance (such as athletics or public speaking)
- Mental clarity, focus, concentration
- Chronic pain
What Are the Benefits of Breathwork?
Practicing breathwork brings physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual benefits, thus improving overall functioning.10 Because your breath directly impacts the way your nervous system operates, learning to control how you breathe can help you experience greater well-being.
Coomer stresses that the benefits of breathwork are extensive: “Some of the most commonly researched and reported benefits are reduction in stress, better sleep, improved digestion, improved athletic performance, improved focus, improved sex life, and improved heart rate variability. Your breath is connected to nearly every other aspect of your health and wellness, so it has a plethora of benefits.”
Physical Benefits of Breathwork
When you practice slow, deep breathing, you improve the way your body functions. Practicing breathwork is also linked to relief from chronic pain. When we experience pain, we don’t breathe deeply using our primary breathing muscles (the diaphragm and intercostal muscles), but instead use our secondary breathing muscles (located in the chest, shoulders, and neck). Employing breathwork to intentionally use our primary breathing muscles reverses the process and helps us better manage chronic pain.
Here are just some of the physical benefits of breathwork:
- Allows your body to use oxygen more efficiently
- Boosts cardiovascular and respiratory health
- Improves hormone and neurotransmitter functioning
- Facilitates healthy gut functioning
- Increases motor control
Mental Benefits of Breathwork
Breathwork has been found to have a positive impact on mental health. It can regulate mood, sharpen attention and concentration, and improve neuroplasticity, or the ability of brain cells to adapt and change in response to situations we encounter.
Neuroplasticity improves our psychological flexibility, allowing us to pause and respond thoughtfully to problems and challenges rather than reacting emotionally or trying to control life circumstances.18 Also, breathwork enhances mindfulness and anchors people in the present moment, away from negative thoughts and feelings about the past or the future that contribute to anxiety and depression.
Spiritual Benefits of Breathwork
While breathwork can be a secular practice, it is believed to offer spiritual benefits as well, and many people engage in breathwork primarily for its spiritual component. Largely because of the theta waves it induces, deep breathing is associated with enhanced intuition and creativity, connection with the subconscious mind, and a heightened sense of spiritual connection to something greater than ourselves.
People who regularly engage in breathwork often report feeling more aware of and attuned to their inner, true selves.16 They also describe feeling a sense of awakening and deeper connection to their breath as their life force that is part of the greater world around them.