Mental and physical health begins by learning how to take a deep, diaphragmatic breath. How we breathe impacts every facet of our being.
Video Transcript
Morris (00:25):
Hey, my friends. How’s it going? Today we’re going to be bring you some breaths to calm down, relax, relieve anxiety and manage stress. This begins by learning how to take a proper deep diaphragmatic breath. That means breathing from the diaphragm, breathing from down low, initiating the breath as low down in the belly and the pelvis as possible, and stretching that breath all the way into your upper chest, and then gently letting it cascade back down again, always breathing in and out through the nose. We breathe more than 22,000 times a day. Most of us breathe around 15 to 18 breaths per minute… and we want to learn to slow our breath, deepen our breath, and lengthen our breath – lowering our breaths per minute to half or a third of that.
(01:20):
When we do that we enter a calm, parasympathetic state accessing our rest and digest system. It’s where we want to be living from. When we’re in a balanced, normal, chill state we make better decisions. Our emotions are regulated. Everything gets better in life! Rather than living from a frenetic, tight, constricted, anxious state – we become balanced and centered. So the main thing I want you guys to understand is that our minds are manipulated through our bodies. So we work through the body to clear our minds. The main way we do this is by slowing our breath. So we use the breath to access the body. Once we access the body, we slow down. And once we do that, the mind has no choice but to follow. So that’s what we’re going to learn right here, right now. How to take a nice, deep, long, diaphragmatic breath that puts us in a parasympathetic state, chills us out, and breaks through the tension, stress & anxiousness we live with in our daily lives. So, bringing one hand to the low belly and one to the upper chest. Remember , breathing through the nose while initiating the breath in the belly. So with me, exhale gently through the nose and then begin.
(03:00):
Beautiful. Initiating the breath in the low belly and then stretching the breath into the upper chest. Nice, deep, long, consistent breaths. We’re engaging the diaphragm, breathing through the nose. Simply breathing through the nose in a slower pattern is going to give us a minimum of an 18% oxygen advantage. If we slow the breath even further, getting down to six breaths a minute or less, we can up our oxygen utilization by as much as 35% (depending on how dysregulated your breath normally is.) Staying with this breath, big breath into the belly, stretching the breath into the upper chest.
(03:49):
Beautiful. Coming to a rest. Great job. Okay, next exercise. Understand this, we get 70% of the air in our low lungs, so it’s really important to be breathing from down low. So I want you to bring your hands to your outer floating ribs and try to grow your breath horizontally. I want you to imagine that you’re blowing up like a balloon. Breathing from down low. So with me now, we’re going play a little game. How small can we get on the exhale.. and how big can we become on the inhale? Watch me. I’m going to inhale through my nose. I’m going to exhale all my air out through my nose and get as small as possible.
(04:57):
Did you see how much my hands grew? So I want you to try that for yourself right here, right now. Bring your hands down low, inhale through your nose. Exhale all your air out through your nose. Blow it all out. Get real small. And now begin inhaling through your nose and expanding from east to west, growing as large as you possibly can. And then turning the breath at the top, gently exhaling through the nose, deepening your exhale. We can only inhale as much air as we exhale. One more of those. Big breath, beautiful. Initiating your breath down low and pulling it all the way into the upper chest. Exhale gently. And you can release. Beautiful work. So something to bring to your minds. Have you ever watched a child breathe? Okay? When a child breathes, they breathe these big, beautiful, voluminous breaths in this big beautiful pattern, right?
(06:02):
No constriction. That’s how we want to learn to breathe. It’s really a matter of learning how to rebreathe because we all began breathing that way as babies. And then over time, we’ve all constricted from the events of our lives, stress, traumas, and we’ve all condensed or collapsed. Every breath is an opportunity to expand our bodies, expand our minds, and lay down whatever stress and negativity we’re holding. So that was how to take one deep, proper diaphragmatic breath. And this is the breath that we wanna be using in our daily lives. Stretching our breath, in a nice beautiful pattern, from low down in the belly, then high into the upper chest, and then just letting it cycle back down again.
Thank you so much for your time.
