Hi everyone,
I hope you’re having a great weekend.
Let’s continue on our theme of slow breathing and enhanced well-being. If you missed/forgot last week’s post, check it out here.
The paper I’m sharing this week might win best title award (well, at least the part before the colon):
How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing
(Click Here to read full summary)
That’s pretty awesome for a peer-reviewed journal article.
This paper examined a wide range of studies to understand how physiological changes associated with slow breathing correlated with improved emotional outcomes.
Here are the common results they found throughout the literature:
Slow breathing increases heart rate variability
Slow breathing increases respiratory sinus arrhythmia
Slow breathing increases alpha brain wave activity
These benefits were correlated with improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being.
Thus, breathing changes your physiology, and your physiology changes your emotions.
And to me, that wasn’t the best part. This was.
The authors hypothesize that the nose provides the link between slow breathing, brain and autonomic functioning, and positive emotional outcomes. It’s not just slow breathing, it’s nose breathing. Breathing slowly through the mouth would not improve stress and anxiety.
From a practical perspective, all of the studies used breathing rates of 3-6 breaths/min. With practice, we can use an app (such as Breathing Zone) to achieve these slow rates.
However, let’s not rely purely on the science. Try practicing slow breathing at 6 breaths/min for 5 min/day to see the results for yourself. They might turn out to be the most important 5 minutes of your day.
In good breath,
Nick
P.S. Lean into stress.