Why Should You Practice Deep Breathing?

"Because it's the Cornerstone of HARDCORE Stress Management!"

Even more important than meditation … because without mastering the breath, true meditation is almost impossible.

If you learn nothing else from me, learn this:

“The breath is the bridge between the body and the mind.”

The above statement is so important, I am going to repeat if for you …

“The breath is the bridge between the body and the mind!”

You will hear me talk a lot about how stress affects the body, and how to “attack stress at its root, in the body”. But the real question is how to do it!

The answer to the question of “how” is with the breath. Specifically, deep breathing.

The secret to the importance of deep breathing with regards to stress management lies in a certain unique quality that the breath possesses.

The breath is one of the few functions of the body that is both voluntary and involuntary.

What do I mean? I’ll show you!

If I tell you to breathe quickly, it’s easy enough to do, isn’t it? You just breathe in and out faster, probably puffing out your chest as the air audibly passes in and out of your nose.

And if I tell you to breathe more slowly, that’s also easy enough to do … you just slow down the process of inhalation and exhalation – anyone can do that.

What we have demonstrated is that the act of breathing is under your control – it is voluntary.

But what happens if you don’t concentrate on breathing fast or slow? What happens if you ignore the breath altogether?

Nothing!

That’s right, you go right on breathing in and out, regardless of whether you’re thinking about it or not. And for the vast majority of your life, you pay little to no attention to your breath, because it’s essentially auto-pilot.

That’s what I mean when I say the breath is voluntary and involuntary.

There are very few other bodily functions that share the same dual quality. For instance, if I told you to make your heart beat faster, or slower, you probably couldn’t do it.

At least, it’s much harder to do!

It’s the same if I asked you to speed up your digestion, or grow your hair faster, slow down your kidney’s rate of blood filtration, or any other involuntary process.

But the breath, the breath is different. Not only do we have control over it, but by controlling it we can indirectly affect other bodily processes that are otherwise out of our control.

For instance, if you practice deep breathing slowly over a period of time, the entirety of your bodily functions with slow down as well – everything from heart rate, metabolism, endocrine production, you name it!

Are you beginning to see how important a tool deep breathing is for stress management?

The breath is like a master switch for tuning your body …

Want a blast of energy? Start breathing deeply and powerfully at a slightly faster rate than usual and feel your system wake up.

Want to calm down? Breathe deeply and slowly, and feel your heart slow down and your system relax.

The key is not just breathing consciously, but breathing deeply … the more deeply we breathe, the more profound an effect we can have on our physiology.

Taking control of our breath allows us to take control of the way that the mind influences the body.

The finer technical points of deep breathing are beyond the scope of this article – indeed, I devote several chapters of my HARDCORE Stress Management™ program to detailing exactly the right and the wrong way (yes, there are some very wrong ways!) to breathe deeply. Pick yourself up a copy today.

And to knock-out stress with a HARDCORE “one-two punch”, work on combining deep breathing with your meditation practice.