Simple Techniques to Reduce Stress and Anxiety, Enhance Concentration, and Balance Your Emotions

BY: RICHARD BROWN, MD & PATRICIA GERBARG, MD

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Additional Note + Free Audio Program

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in breathing—which means you : )

It also comes with guided breathing tracks that teach you how to perform most of the breaths they discuss. The audio is super valuable and makes it even easier to start using these exercises today: https://www.shambhala.com/healingpowerofthebreath/

4 THOUGHTS

1. Healing and Thriving are Now Available to Everyone

“Throughout history, great healers have discovered the power of breathing to enhance the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of their people. Once secret and sacred, breath practices are now available to everyone. We invite you on a journey through our book and the Healing Power of the Breath audio program to learn simple, natural methods to become calmer, overcome stress, boost energy, focus your mind, enhance physical fitness, sleep peacefully, and feel closer to those you love.”

That’s how the book starts, and it’s a perfect way to start this 411. The book blends ancient wisdom with modern science to provide accessible and practical ways we can use our breath to heal and thrive.

Quite literally, they make healing and thriving available to everyone.

And perhaps the best part was how they chose which breaths to include. After examining ancient wisdom and modern research along with years of real-world clinical application, they say:

“Rather than write an exhaustive book with hundreds of breath practices, we have selected a few that are easy to teach, easy to learn, safe, rapidly effective, and useful in many different aspects of life.”

Sounds perfect to me. Let’s jump into the core breathing practices and see how we can use them in our lives.

2. The Three Core Breathing Practices

The three core breathing practices taught in this book are Coherent Breathing®, Resistance Breathing, and Breath Moving. Let’s briefly look at each one.

1. Coherent Breathing® is taught as breathing at a rate of 5 breaths a minute with a 6-second inhale, and a 6-second exhale. Why do we do it?

“Coherent Breathing … calms the mind, slows the heart, lowers blood pressure, reduces inflammation, and strengthens stress resilience.” <-- Sounds good.

2. Resistance Breathing is any technique that adds resistance to our breath. They have two practices for this, ujjayi (or ocean breath) and pursed-lips breathing:

“Whether you choose to make a sound in the back of your throat like the ocean or to use pursed lips to create resistance to the flow of air, your practice of Resistance Breathing can amplify the benefits of Coherent Breathing.”

3. Breath Moving: “Breath Moving entails moving the breath in circuits to different parts of the body, moving upward on the inhale and downward on the exhale. … [It]…can be used to elevate energy as well as to relieve pain.”

Total Breath: Combining all three into one practice.

“While these breath practices have traditionally been used separately, we combine them into one Total Breath practice in order to intensely activate the parasympathetic system and create the most powerful effects on the stress-response system in the shortest possible time.”

(The free audio program with the book has guided tracks for each of these breathing exercises—I found it especially helpful for Breath Moving).

And finally, if you don’t want to deal with any of that, the absolute bottom line, only-sentence-you-need from this book is:

“Coherent Breathing sets the fundamental rhythm for transformation. If you use only one technique from this book, let it be Coherent Breathing.”

Alright, let’s next look at why these breaths work to improve our health.

***

P.S. They provide several other powerful practices, including the 4-4-6-2 breath, “Ha” breathing, chanting, and light movement practices linked with the breath. Check out the book for more.

3. Why These Breaths Improve Our Health

“Of all the automatic functions of the body, only one can be easily controlled voluntarily—breathing. By voluntarily changing the rate, depth, and pattern of breathing, we can change the messages being sent from the body’s respiratory system to the brain. In this way, breathing techniques provide a portal to the autonomic communication network through which we can…send specific messages to the brain using the language of the body.”

That’s a perfect description of why all breathing methods work. But for the three core breaths, here are three reasons why they help just about everyone.

1. They reduce stress: “One of the ways that Coherent Breathing and Resistance Breathing work is by turning off the “worry centers” of the brain. … The tendency to calm both the intellect and the emotions may account for the rapid effects of these breath practices in reducing negative thoughts and emotions, such as excessive worry and anxiety.”

2. They increase HRV: “[B]reathing slowly increases HRV. Is that good? … increasing HRV is very good, because having a higher HRV is associated with a healthier, more flexible cardiovascular system, a more balanced and resilient stress-response system, and overall greater health and longevity.”

3. They cause brain synchronization: “When people did breathing practices such as slow breathing with Resistance Breathing, as well as other breath forms, however, their electroencephalograms showed an increased synchrony, that is, the tendency for the peaks and valleys of the brain waves from diverse areas of the brain to line up in synchronous activity.”

And if that isn’t enough, they also show that these practices increase circulation and maximize blood flow to the extremities. Not bad for 20 minutes a day 👏

4. How and When to Do the Core Breathing Exercises

“In learning breath practices the most important thing to remember is to relax. … Self-judgment adds another layer of stress. The less you judge yourself, the easier it will be to relax and experience the benefits … Try not to evaluate or judge what is happening. Just go with it.”

That’s perfect advice for all their breathing practices. They also recommend sitting or lying down and keeping your eyes closed and hands still. Easy enough.

As for the length of practice, here’s what they suggest:

“For healthy people who have mild to moderate stress, twenty minutes of Total Breath practice once a day is usually sufficient. However, during periods of greater stress, it helps to practice twice a day. […] For people with anxiety or depression, we recommend twenty minutes twice a day.”

As for the time of day, here are their guidelines:

“Total Breath is best done in the morning. Because some people find Breath Moving to be activating, we recommend simple Coherent Breathing or Coherent Breathing plus Resistance Breathing at night to facilitate sleep. During the day, Coherent Breathing, Resistance Breathing, and Breath Moving can be used as often as necessary to prevent or minimize anxiety.”

But remember, if we do nothing else, we can simply use Coherent Breathing® for 20 minutes daily. It doesn’t get any simpler or more effective than that.

1 LIFE-CHANGING IDEA

Beyond Stress: What Will You Do with the Breath?

“Breathwork can help relieve symptoms of everyday worry, anxiety, insomnia, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or physical injury. It can be used alone or as a complementary treatment that fits seamlessly into any therapeutic plan without causing side effects. And beyond improving stress resilience, breath practices can restore your sense of being genuinely who you are, of knowing what you feel, of recognizing what others feel, and of being able to experience deep and meaningful connections with people, with your values, and with all that is.” (my bold)

That might be one of the best excerpts I’ve read on breathing. And to me, that bold section is what’s truly life-changing: remembering that all this breathing stuff is more than just stress resiliency, brain synchrony, or HRV. It’s about restoring a sense of being genuinely who we are. Of connecting with all that is.

With that in mind, let’s end with this unbelievably powerful question:

“Now that you have learned the core breathing practices, they are yours forever. No one can take them from you. They will never run out, run down, or expire. They belong to you. So, what will you do with them?”

1 STACK OF MEMORABLE QUOTES

“The daily use of breath practices can turn back the tide of stress, counteract disease progression, and improve overall quality of life.”

“What do Mahatma Gandhi, the martial artist Bruce Lee, Buddhist meditators, Christian monks, Hawaiian kahunas, and Russian Special Forces have in common? They all used breathing to enhance their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.”

“The presence of related ancient breath forms in so many different areas of the world suggests that their roots must go back in time, perhaps ten thousand years or more.”

“Can you focus your life-breath until you become supple as a newborn child?” - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“The breathing will seamlessly bring you back to the natural mental and emotional flexibility you had as a child, but with the direction and purpose you have as an adult.”

“In the Anapanasati Sutra, an ancient Buddhist text, Buddha taught that awareness of breath was the beginning and the end of the road to enlightenment.”

“All breathing should be slow and gentle without any straining.”

“Once you establish an inner calm, you will transmit it naturally to others.”

“Breathing practices have the power to restore a healthy balance in the stress-response system, to unlock the grip of trauma on the mind and emotions, to create the conditions necessary for healing from the many effects of trauma. As this healing occurs, we rediscover our true selves and the capacity for love and bonding that are essential to our relationships.”

“Learning to dissolve anxiety by breathing slowly, smoothly, and evenly can go a long way toward improving performance in any field of endeavor.”

“Even though you have read this far, you still may not fully realize that you now have the ability to change your life by using the breathing and movement practices you have learned.”

“Breath practices have changed the lives of millions of people. How they will change your life depends on the effort you put into learning and practicing some of the methods in this book as well as attending more intensive courses.”

One More Time: