Breathing exercises seem sort of silly at first. I mean, we all breathe; otherwise we wouldn’t be alive. Why does it need to be practiced or observed or explored? Because most of the time, many of us breathe shallow, short breaths, and that sort of inhale and exhale pattern doesn’t do much more than keep your body functioning at a bare minimum. When you play around with different breath patterns, you can feel how your body adapts and reacts; you can learn to control your breath, slow it down or speed it up, and use it as a tool to counteract feelings of fight-or-flight—all of which proves plenty helpful in busy lives, relationships, and health-related matters.
I first tried counting intentional breaths in a yoga class, though I was familiar with the general concept around taking deep breaths amid stressful moments. It’s essentially the same concept: you count to one on your inhale, then count to one on your exhale. You count to two on your inhale, then count to two on your exhale. Work your way up to the count of five, and most importantly, go as slow as possible. Allow your breath to make noise; you can even place your hands on your belly to feel it rise and fall, or close your eyes to avoid distraction. Use this exercise at any moment, in any location, for any situation where you feel overwhelmed or like you need to pause or hit the reset button. And almost every time, you’ll probably discover that you feel a little more in control, a little calmer, as a result. Breathing for five seconds doesn’t eliminate life problems, but it does give your mind a chance to back off from a negative thought pattern or stop freaking out about something, and in a physical sense, it sends oxygen to your parasympathetic nervous system to reduce the amount of cortisol in your blood, which minimizes stress and panic.