Why is breathing important or even a topic of discussion
Breathing correctly is not only important for living longer, it also keeps you in a good mood and performing at your best. Let us look at the benefits of deep breathing and why you should make it part of your everyday sustainable living.
Breathing Detoxifies and Releases Toxins
Your body is designed to release 70% of its toxins through breathing. If you are not breathing effectively, you are not properly ridding your body of its toxins. Other systems in your body must work overtime which could eventually lead to illness. When you exhale air from your body you release carbon dioxide that has been passed through your bloodstream into your lungs. Carbon dioxide is a natural waste of your body’s metabolism.
Breathing Releases Tension and Brings Clarity
Think how your body feels when you are tense, angry, scared or stressed. It constricts inward. Your muscles get tight and your breathing becomes shallow. When your breathing is shallow you are not getting the amount of oxygen to circulate through your body.
When you take a deep breath you are also stretching muscles in your neck, chest, and stomach. You’re also sending oxygen to those muscles. Pay attention to your breathing, breathe slowly, deeply, and purposefully into your body. Notice any places that are tight and breathe into them. As you relax your body, you may find that the breathing brings clarity and insights to you as well.
Breathing Relieves Pain.
Breathing has a real connection to how you think, feel and experience life.
Let’s examine what happens to your breathing when you anticipate pain?
You probably hold your breath, yet studies show that breathing into your pain helps to ease it.
Breathing improves Circulation
The movements of the diaphragm during the deep breathing exercise massage the stomach, small intestine, liver, and pancreas. The upper movement of the diaphragm massages the heart. When you inhale air your diaphragm descends and your abdomen expands. By this action, you massage vital organs and improve their circulation. Controlled breathing also strengthens and tones your abdominal muscles.
Breathing Strengthens the Immune System
Oxygen travels through your bloodstream by attaching to hemoglobin in red blood cells. This, in turn, enriches your body to metabolize vitamins and nutrients.
Breathing Improves Quality of the Blood
Deep breathing increases blood quality by removing carbon dioxide and increasing oxygen in the blood.
Breathing Improves Posture
Good breathing techniques over a sustained period of time will encourage good posture. In order to take a deep breath, your body needs to be straight. Bad body posture results in incorrect breathing so the process works in a cycle.
Breathing Increases Digestion and Assimilation of food
The more oxygen the stomach receives, the more food it digests efficiently. The digestion is further enhanced by the fact that the food is oxygenated.
Breathing Improves the Nervous System
The brain, spinal cord, and nerves are nourished with oxygen. This improves the health of the whole body since the nervous system communicates to all parts of the body.
Proper Breathing makes the Heart Stronger.
Breathing exercises reduce the workload on the heart in two ways. Firstly, deep breathing leads to more efficient lungs, which means more oxygen, is brought into contact with blood sent to the lungs by the heart. So, the heart doesn’t have to work as hard to deliver oxygen to the tissues. Secondly, deep breathing leads to a greater pressure differential in the lungs, which leads to an increase in the circulation, thus resting the heart a little.
Breathing Strengthen the Lungs
As you breathe deeply the lungs become healthy and powerful, a good insurance against respiratory problems.
Proper Breathing assists in Weight Control
If you are overweight, extra oxygen burns up excess fat more efficiently. If you are underweight, extra oxygen feeds starving tissues and glands.
“If you breathe half a breathe, you’ll only live half a life” – Jintrovert