How to Take a Deep Breath

Stand up. Put one hand on your chest and the other hand on your belly just below your belly button. To identify the muscle you’re going to use, try tightening or sucking in your belly over and over rapidly about five or six times. You should start to feel a little muscle burn right under your rib cage. Got it? That’s your diaphragm.

Next, we’re going to exhale by contracting that muscle and tightening the belly. In fact, hold a finger up in front of you about a foot away from your face and tighten your belly and blow a blast of air at your finger. You should feel the air move past your finger. Do it two or three times in a row.

Once you’ve got that down, you need a really long, sustained exhale. Ideally, you want to be exhaling for six to eight seconds and then inhaling for five to seven seconds. You want the exhale to be longer than the inhale, and you want the whole breath cycle to take 10 to 15 seconds.

Benefits for the Digestive Tract

Deep diaphragmatic breathing not only turns off the body’s stress response but also optimizes motility in the digestive tract. That’s especially good news for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). When your gut starts cramping, sometimes just two to four deep breaths can be enough to relax the motor muscles and get the cramping to ease up."

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

#DeepBreathing #Stress #Mindfulness #Coping