Human breathing patterns consistently echo the emotional state. Healthy breathing occurs naturally when relaxed, sharing quality time with the family, eating a nice dinner, or catching a great night’s sleep. It’s when life throws the unexpected, the dangerous or stressful situations caused by everyday life, that people's breathing moves into the fight-or flight response.
Maintain Normal Heart Rate
When humans are under threat of physical attack, their biologic reaction is the same as animals. The heart rate increases, then abdominal muscles contract and tighten, and breathing moves up into the chest which speeds up the heart rate approximately 15 breaths per minute, causing adrenaline to pump. In the wild, this adrenaline was used by either running or fighting back, and then the body would return to normal.
Now that humans are in social situations as opposed to the wild, it’s impossible to just flee or fight back when threatened. So when criticism comes from the boss, co-worker, or clients, one can’t run or start a physical confrontation, though in some cases, it would be righteous. Instead, sitting back and stifling resentments and hostilities raises blood pressure, the stomach muscles tighten and adrenaline rushes to increase physical awareness. If one can’t find an immediate outlet for this buildup of energy, it rolls over into deadly stress.
Lowering Blood Pressure
If one learns how to recover the breath to slower, deeper breathing, he can quiet stress chemistry quite quickly. Impressively, the Food and Drug Administration approves breath training to reduce hypertension as does the Journal of Human Hypertension, April 2001, volume 15, number 4, and pages 263-269. In order to keep out of the fight-or-flight breathing for extended periods of time, one must learn how to restore healthy breathing patterns.
Healthy Breathing Exercise for Controlling High Blood Pressure
There are three stages to healthy deep-in breath:
- Always begin by sitting up straight.
- Relax the belly muscles.
- Expand the chest muscles, widening the rib cage. breathe in through the nose, the collarbones move up and the shoulders relax, free the airway in the throat by slightly tilting the head back, this allows air to fill the upper part of the lungs.
Now reverse these stages for a healthy out-breath:
- Exhale, bending forward with a slight tilt of the head.
- Drop the collarbone and shoulders moving slightly forward releasing the breath, out the nose. The chest muscles relax and the ribcage moves downward.
- The abdominal muscles relax and the belly contracts slightly.
This breathing technique is not to be confused with deep breathing technique which incorporates in through the nose, out through the mouth breaths.
Ten Minutes a Day for Normal Blood Pressure
Begin every day with three minutes of an exaggerated form of the three step processes, waking up the entire body. Continue with two or three minutes of a more subtle version. Finally, breathe all the air out of the lungs until the body says it’s time to breathe; then refresh the in-breath, and then repeat the process for five more minutes. It’s that simple to obtain the more oxygen rich blood that’s so important to reduce disease, especially high blood pressure.
Source:
Hendricks, G. (2005) the Breathing Box. Sounds True, Inc: China
Sharon Colaizzi - Sharon is a professional freelance writer and is working on many writing assignments. She loves to write on any and all subject matter ...
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