The Impact of Breathwork.

By: Victoria Pulla

What is breathwork in your own words?

Breathwork is a general term that describes various breathing techniques that use intentional control of the breath for the purpose of promoting mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. It is a tool you can use to regulate your nervous system which controls how you transmit and process information in your body. The idea is that by consciously controlling your breath, you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest state), which promotes relaxation and stress reduction for the mind and body. Thus, it has the ability to improve emotion regulation and increase awareness of bodily sensations, which can be beneficial for mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, stress, trauma and addictions.

Why is breathwork important? 

Practicing breathwork is important because your breath is a powerful tool for connecting your mind and your body. Most people breathe in a dysfunctional way, typically short breaths in and out of the chest. This type of breathing enables the body to be in a sympathetic state, also known as the fight/flight/freeze state, where the body perceives a threat or stressor. When people are spending more time in this heightened state, they are more susceptible to storing negative thoughts, emotions or traumas in the mind and body.

By intentionally controlling the rate, depth and rhythm of your breath, you can modulate your emotional state and support your body in completing its activation cycle. The activation cycle refers to the physiological changes that occur in the body as a response to a perceived threat or stressor. As such, when you intentionally breathe, you give your body the opportunity to release stored thoughts, emotions or traumas from the body and mind. This supports the body in spending more time in the parasympathetic state (the rest and digest state) where your body is better able to take deeper belly breaths and feel more relaxed.

Therefore, if you can learn to control and manipulate your breath, you can then control and manipulate your emotions and physiology, which then impacts your psychology (your mind and the thoughts you think).

What are the benefits of breathwork?

Physical

o   Boost immune function

o   Lower blood pressure

o   Increases lung capacity

o   Strengthens your diaphragm and lungs

o   Increases heartrate variability (allows your body to be adaptable to changes. People with high HRV are usually less stressed and more happy)

o   Increases vagal tone (allows your nervous system to have more flexibility)

o   Promotes healthy digestion

o   Increases autonomic flexibility

o   Stimulates neuroplastic processes in the nervous system

o   Relieves physical pain

o   Widens your window of tolerance and regulates your nervous system

Mental

o   Rewires the brain to release old patterns and create new ones via neuroplasticity

o   Increases attention and focus

o   Increases overall mental well-being (influences the physiology and therefore psychology since they’re connected)

Emotional

o   Reduce feelings of stress, anxiety and panic

o   Release heavy emotions living within the system

o   Supports integration of grief and loss

o   Processes and releases trauma

o   Processes and releases emotional pain

o   Allows you to respond to life with less reactivity

o   Increases feelings of deep self-love and love for others

o   Increases feelings of joy

o   Increase confidence and self-esteem

o   Increases feelings of deep relaxation and inner peace

Spiritual

o   Connect to your Higher Self

o   Shift your energy state

o   Increases self-awareness

o   Connect with and hear the wisdom of your body

o   Access different states of consciousness

How do you incorporate breathwork into your therapy work with clients?

Depending on the client and their goals there are a few ways I incorporate breathwork into my therapy work with clients:

o   Starting session with a short breathwork meditation so that we can ground down before diving into the talk therapy work

o   Teaching different breathing techniques to support with emotion regulation and nervous system regulation based on different situations the client presents

o   Deep dive into a full meditative breathwork session where the client spends majority of the session breathing and releasing stored emotion from the body while I coach them through the process. In this process, there’s little to no communication back and forth, supportive music is played and it focuses more on the somatic and internal work happening for the client

What are the synergies between your yoga and breathwork practice?

Breathwork and yoga are both somatic based, bottom-up practices, which means that they focus on what is happening in the body first and look at the mind second. This is opposite to traditional talk therapies such as CBT where they focus on the thoughts and mind first, body second.

Both yoga and breathwork practices offer the opportunity to calm the mind and body, overall promoting a deeper sense of relaxation and a reduction of stress and anxiety. They also induce endorphins which promotes overall mood boost.  

What are some ways clients could integrate breathwork into their day to day lives that would have an overall positive impact on their wellbeing?

1.     Starting the day with intentional breathing for at least 3 minutes. My favourite way to do this is by putting on an uplifting song and taking deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth for the entire duration of the song. It’s a sure way to boost your mood and set a positive tone for the day.

2.     Ending the day with the pulse breath – this is my favourite sleep support hack I teach all of my clients and you can do it in bed. Practice taking 3 breaths in through the nose (into the belly, into the chest and up through your head), then exhaling 3 breaths out through the nose. As the name suggests, think about pulsing the breath in and pulsing it out. I also love to add “I am” affirmation statements while pulsing on the inhale as a way of energetically bringing that statement into your nervous system and rewiring the subconscious mind while you sleep.

3.     When feeling anxious, the snake breath can be incredibly supportive at activating the vagus nerve and calming the body down. Think about taking a breath in through the nose and on your exhale making a “SSSS” sound like a snake. I recommend doing this for 3-5 minutes continuously or until you feel a shift within your body’s sensations. Again, option to play music while breathing to offer additional soothing support.

4.     When feeling depressed or low mood, to increase or shift out of this energy, I recommend the blow breath. This breath is rapid and done all through the mouth. Imagine you had 100 cupcakes lined up with individual candles on each one and you have to blow out every candle one at a time. It’s a forceful exhale through the mouth like you’re blowing out a candle, the inhale automatically comes back in so that you can blow out the next candle so to speak. It’s a continuous breath, as soon as you exhale, the inhale pops in and then you force the exhale again. This breath can feel challenging for some so I recommend starting off slow, maybe taking a rest every 20 breaths until you feel a shift in energy or mood.