About Breathing
Breathing is what we always do. It also is the best exercise.
While not easily noticeable, the process of breathing requires extensive use of muscles.
Diaphragm and intercostal muscles are the major players. Many other muscles help too.
You may be curious at this point: what about pilates, yoga and other resistance exercises?
Those are the exercises that will help you breath properly.
For instance, weakening of the muscles engaged in the process of breathing makes it harder to breath properly.
We do pilates or yoga to strengthen these weakened muscles, so that we can breath well.
How To Breathe Properly
To breath properly, you want to loosen up muscles of your body.
When the muscles get tense, it becomes much harder to take deep, proper breaths.
If you have tense muscles, you can deal with them either by stretching, strengthening or massaging them.
There’s a simple test to check if your muscles are too tense.
Take a deep breath in right now. While it’s normal and natural for the shoulder to rise slightly during inhalation, if your shoulders rise too much almost to your ears, you have tense muscles.
There are many exercises that can help relieve tension in the shoulder and neck area.
These would include shrugging, around the world and many other exercises.
Breathing Is The Best Exercise Equipment
I’ll tell you how to use breathing as a tool to enhance the quality of your workout sessions.
If you want to relieve tension of your left abdominal muscles, squeeze your right abdominal muscles, loosen up all other areas and do a deep inhalation.
When exhaling, slightly tighten your inner abdominal muscle, or transversus abdominis.
If you feel like your back is too weak compared to your anterior abdominal area, squeeze your abdominal muscles, loosen up all other areas and perform a deep inhalation.
Next, follow the aforementioned exhalation method.
This way, you can use breathing as a tool better than most gym equipment.
Breathing As A Way To Relieve Stress
Breathing also is the best way to relieve stress.
Chronic stress is forged by the overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system.
While the sympathetic nervous system is an integral part of the nervous system, overactivation is not beneficial.
Proper breathing allows for the release of tension, getting the overactivated state back to normal.
Highly trained Buddhist monks experience slower heart rate during meditation.
If you can get a control over your autonomic nervous system via the process of breathing, your mind will become peaceful and calm.
Also Try
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