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Maybe you were nervous, agitated, or anxious; maybe you were crying or upset. Either way, at some point in your life, someone has told you to “just breathe.”
It may seem obvious, but it helps. Breathing consciously has been shown to have profound benefits for your physical and mental health. In addition to regulating the nervous system and reducing stress, breathing mindfully can improve mental focus, promote self-esteem, enhance performance, and increase creativity.
Makes sense, then, that engaging in a focused practice centered on mindful breathing—also known as breathwork—would also be extremely beneficial. “Breathwork takes you from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind,” explains Marta Plannells, cofounder of The Breath Act, an Ibiza-based healing center that combines conscious breathing, neuroscience, and sound to help improve and optimize physical, mental, and emotional well-being. “Breathwork is specifically created to regulate our nervous system and release emotions trapped in our body—everything that we store for years and years that ends up unbalancing us emotionally,” Plannells says.
The benefits of breathwork
“Through controlled breathing, we learn to use our body as an instrument,” Plannells’ co-founder, Juan D’Angelo explains. “We learn to self-soothe, regulate our nervous system, and even minimize our need for external sources to solve our problems. Breathing not only helps us to release stress or negative emotions, but also allows us to quiet mental chatter.”
The transformative benefits of breathwork are varied and well-documented, but—as with many so-called alternative therapies—research is limited. However, the history of using the breath to calm the parasympathetic nervous system, slow the heart rate, regulate digestion, and achieve a balanced state is nearly as old as humanity itself. “These techniques have emerged worldwide with complex historical roots from various traditions such as yoga (i.e., alternate nostril breathing) and Tibetan Buddhism (i.e., vase breathing) along with psychedelic communities (i.e., conscious connected breathing) and scientific/medical researchers and practitioners (i.e., coherent/resonant frequency breathing),” one current meta-analyst states.
Breathing and neuroscience
Plannells and D’Angelo are particularly interested in what new scientific research could uncover—especially since the duo originally discovered the transformative powers of breathwork via Dr. Joe Dispenza, whose work involves a combination of breathing, meditation, music, and neuroscience.
“Conscious breathing is connected to a physiological process which momentarily lowers activity in the neocortex, home of the analytical mind,” Plannells explains. “Through breathwork, we manage to quiet the mental noise. This gives us access to our limbic brain; our subconscious. That’s our true operating system.”
Being able to access our subconscious—as most psychologists will tell you—is also a game-changer when it comes to shifting our behaviors and beliefs. “When a person is already immersed in the process under guidance, it is very easy to break old neural connections and create new ones,” D’Angelo says of their process, which also involves guided voice meditation, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), and somatic sound therapy. “The tuning forks are small instruments that emit sound waves that allow people to release certain emotional blockages,” they say.
How to do breathwork
“We live in a society where we are constant exposed to pain,” says Pannells. “We also have a natural tendency to anchor ourselves in negative emotions—especially after encountering a challenging situation like a breakup, parental abandonment, violence, grief, a difficult childhood, addiction, or bullying.”
To that end, it can be helpful to have wellness practices in our figurative tool kits that help us find inner peace, balance, gratitude, and the feeling of wholeness. Breathwork—which can be done on your own or with the help of a practitioner—is a great place to start.
Here, the founders of The Breath Act share three simple tips:
Simply start by observing your breathing in your day to day life. Try to notice it at various times—while you’re in the shower, sending an email, checking social media, or playing with your kids. When you notice your breath, try to breathe consciously, deeply, and subtly, through your nose and involving your diaphragm. Don’t try to force it, just become aware of the quality; you may notice your regular breathing is shallow as most of the population breathes poorly, with very short, chesty breaths.
When you wake up in the morning, try to spend the first five minutes of your day consciously breathing instead of going straight to your cell phone. You can pair this with intention-setting—just breathe deeply and visualize how you want to feel for the rest of your day. Grateful? Energized? Productive? Try the following breath: inhale for five seconds and exhale for five seconds. Doing this for five minutes helps to regulate your nervous system and build new neural pathways.
Ahead of an important meeting, a tense conversation or a stressful situation, give yourself a few minutes to breathe consciously. This helps you pause, recenter, and reground yourself before reacting, responding, or making a decision. With practice, you’ll notice that this helps manage and change your energy bringing better, more desirable results.