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Controlled
Breathing Reduces Stress
by
Sam Dworkis
founder of www.extensionyoga.com
“Come
on,” I heard my friend say. “You are so uptight…why don’t you just
take a deep breath and relax.” Aware of its origins or not, she
instinctively knew that controlled deep breathing helps relax our mind,
emotions, and body.
S
omewhere
around three to four thousand years ago, a group of people in India
developed a systematic series of exercises accompanied by controlled deep
breathing and used it to improve the quality of their lives and to counter
the effects of stress. Enabling them to become more in harmony with their
environment, they called their system, “yoga.”
Those
ancient people understood the many benefits that controlled breathing and
yoga promoted. They knew that yoga breathing’s fundamental purpose was
to create a body-mind connection, to reduce stress, to promote relaxation;
and thus, to maximize health.
Notwithstanding
thousands of years of effectiveness, modern
science has only recently been extolling the benefits of controlled
breathing. We now scientifically understand the intimate link between the
breath, body and mind and how controlled breathing has such a beneficial
and profound effect upon brain and blood chemistry.
Everyone
who has experienced sustained unrelenting tension, strain, or anxiety
(stress) knows its negative affect upon health and happiness.
During
periods of sustained stress, whether physical or emotional, real or
imagined; stress-related hormones are released into the blood stream which
over-stimulate metabolism. Known as the “fight-or-flight response,”
heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate and muscle tension all increase
and left unchecked for sustained periods, can cause profound adverse
health events.
Just
as sustained stress promotes the fight or flight response, activating
other areas of the brain results in its reduction. During the 1960’s,
Herbert Benson, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, “discovered” a
counterbalancing mechanism that he called the “relaxation response.”
The
relaxation response, which in practice is similar to yoga, is a physical
and mental state of deep quietness that alters one’s physical and
emotional responses to stress; that is, it decreases heart rate, blood
pressure, and muscle tension. Benson said that when regularly practiced,
the relaxation response has lasting effects and improves overall health.
But
there is much more to yoga than simple breath control and exercises. I
participated in a research program at Wright Patterson Air Force Base that
studied the effects of yoga on the brain. As expected, we confirmed Dr.
Benson’s assertion that easy, quiet yoga-like activities slow brain
waves and contribute to reduced stress. However, we also documented that
vigorous and complicated yoga exercises, when appropriately practiced,
can also reduce active brain-wave activity associated with stress.
It
was only a few decades ago that medical science thought the mind was
separate from the body. However today, science has established a clear
link between the breath, mind, and body that promotes healing. If you wish
to read more about yoga’s mechanisms and their affect upon the body and
mind, click on my educational website, www.extensionyoga.com.
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