6 Benefits of Mindful Breathing and How to Do It
Every day, you take about 20,000 breaths. But how many of them are you actually aware of? From keeping our bodies alive to connecting us to a richer experience of life, the breath is a powerful gift we sometimes take for granted.
Learning how to bring more conscious awareness to your breath can help you go through each day with more ease and clarity. The wonderful thing about your breath is that it’s done for you unconsciously. At the same time, you also have the ability to regulate it as needed so that you either feel calmer or energized.
When you feel frazzled, stressed, or overwhelmed, mindful breathing practices can help you:
Clear your mind and reduce anxiety
Improve blood flow to the brain and body
Bring a sense of calm and focus
Here is an overview of what mindful breathing is and six ways that it benefits your body and mind. We also offer some tips for how to do it so you can practice mindful breathing anytime and anywhere to help you bring more ease or energy into your days.
What is mindful breathing?
Mindful breathing is the practice of placing your attention and focus on your breath. It’s often used as one of the fundamental introductions to mindfulness because it can bring us into the moment quickly and effortlessly.
Practicing mindful breathing is more than simply breathing. It offers many benefits and can help you discover your own breath’s beautiful subtleties and complexities. Mindfulness of the breath is not about trying to change your breath. It’s more about noticing what it feels like to breathe.
As a bonus, getting familiar with mindful breathing makes it easier to practice other breathing techniques that allow you to consciously direct your breath in different ways to either increase attention, arousal, emotional control, or enhance the relaxation response. As you experiment with regulating your breath through your conscious intention, you’ll notice how quickly you can cause changes in your mental and physical state.
How mindful breathing balances your nervous system?
Your breath is intimately tied to the functioning of your entire nervous system. When you’re stressed or overwhelmed, you may notice that you breathe faster and in a more shallow rhythm. The sympathetic branch of your nervous system is activated, preparing your body for action.
In moments of stress, your nervous system triggers the fight or flight response. While this can help you run from a dog chasing after you, the stress response was never meant to be your normal state of being. To get back into balance, your nervous system would need the aid of the relaxation response, which comes from the parasympathetic branch.
The great thing about your breathing is that you can consciously use it to activate the relaxation response. It can calm you when you feel stressed or overwhelmed. By breathing deeply, slowly, and making your exhales longer than your inhales, you activate the parasympathetic part of your nervous system. This invites relaxation and stimulates the vagus nerve. This can bring benefits such as greater calmness and focus and even decreased depression.
Mindful breathing tip:
If you need to relax, deepen and slow your breathing while focusing on longer exhalations.
If you need to feel more awake, alert, or focused, concentrate on deeper inhalations.
As mindful breathing affects your body and mind on different levels, here are some of the benefits that it can bring.
Mindful breathing relieves stress, anxiety, and rumination
Studies have linked breathing practices to reducing anxiety, depression, stress, and emotional exhaustion. When you focus your attention on the sensations of breathing, you’re becoming more present. This helps you shift your attention away from thoughts or feelings that cause you to worry and thus trigger the fight or flight response. Mindful breathing gets you out of your head and into feeling safe in your body.
Mindful breathing improves your focus and attention
Breathing deeply brings more fresh oxygen into your brain. This helps you improve focus and concentration to prevent brain fog and get things done more efficiently. Practicing mindful breathing is also a way to improve attention.
Every time you consistently narrow your focus to one aspect of your experience – such as the breath – you strengthen the neural networks of being able to hold your attention in one spot. This is a valuable skill that can translate into any area of your life, from work to relationships or creativity.
Mindful breathing can help with emotional regulation
It can be easy to get frustrated, angry, fearful, or reactive when something stressful happens. Keeping your breath in mind is a great way to center yourself. It helps you respond to challenges with greater objectivity and emotional intelligence.
Practicing mindfulness helps you notice the thoughts and feelings that arise without judgment. With mindfulness of breath, you can then use your breath as an anchor of attention. This helps your mind stop coming back to emotions that would typically cause you to react in ways that may be hurtful to yourself or others.
Mindful breathing can help you cultivate gratitude
As you slow down enough to get more intimate with the sensations of your own breath, you might feel a sense of awe and wonder at your aliveness. By feeling your breath flow through your nostrils, lungs, and other parts of your body, you become more grateful for your body.
Being in tune with your breath helps you be more in tune with your body, making it easier to appreciate all of the little things that your body does without thinking about it. The more gratitude you feel for anything in your life, including your breath, the easier it is to find more things to be grateful for throughout the rest of your day.
Mindful breathing can slow aging in your brain
According to a recent study, controlled breathing affects noradrenaline levels in your brain. Noradrenaline is a neurotransmitter in the middle of your brain connected to attention and breathing. When you have too much noradrenaline, you’re stressed and can’t focus. When you have too little, you feel sluggish and unmotivated.
The right amount of noradrenaline can help you remain relaxed and alert while making new connections in your brain. This, in turn, helps slow aging and reduces the risk of dementia. so through breathing in a more conscious way, you can regulate this neurotransmitter to slow your own aging process.
Mindful breathing massages your organs
When breathing correctly, your chest expands, and your diaphragm contracts on while inhaling. The opposite happens when you exhale. This increases the movement of muscle tissue which brings fresh oxygenated blood into your digestive system and other organs. This is like a massage for your inner organs, improving intestinal function and helping flush out toxins and waste products.
Try it for yourself: “Massage” the inner muscles of your torso by breathing fully into the abdomen and lower belly. Expand the muscle in your rib cage and feel your diaphragm moving. Repeat for several breaths.
How to practice mindful breathing?
Mindful breathing is often the foundation for starting a mindfulness practice. To do it, you simply bring awareness to what it feels like to be breathing. This helps you anchor your attention in one spot.
It's normal that your mind will wander as you try to focus on your breath. When it does, gently bring it back to your breath – without judgment or resistance. Each time you notice that your mind has wandered, congratulate yourself! It means you're actually being present, which is the point of the practice.
One helpful tip for practicing mindfulness of the breath is to focus your attention on specific sensations within the body rather than on “the breath” in general. Here are some areas of focus to experiment with:
Bring attention to the breath going in and out of your nostrils. Is it warm or cold? Does it feel stuffy, dry, or humid?
Feel your lungs and rib cage expanding and contracting with each breath.
Place your awareness (and your hand, if you feel comfortable) on your belly. Feel it rising and falling with each inhale and exhale.
As you focus on these areas, bring a sense of curiosity. Explore your breath as if it was the first time you’ve ever felt it. Notice what each sensation feels like as if it was the first time. Know that there’s no wrong way to bring attention to your breath. Have fun with it and feel appreciation for the wonder of your own body.
Start mindful breathing today
When events occur in our lives that carry a high emotional charge, whether positive or negative, we may be quick to move on to the next thing. When it comes to positive experiences, we often forget them faster than negative experiences (which our brain naturally wants to hold onto for protection).
Journaling can help you savor more of the good things in life so that you can feel appreciation and gratitude more frequently.
Meditation can help guide you through breathing practices. Check out our profile on Insight Timer!
Take just a few minutes at the end of every day to reflect on what went well, what you may be proud of, and what you’re grateful for. You may soon start noticing more opportunities to be grateful as you’re training your brain to strengthen the neural pathways that allow you to register these good events more often.
