Breathing and our nervous system
Our breath influences our nervous system. Our nervous system influences our breath. Our breath is an incredible tool for our conscious body to communicate with our unconscious body. By observing our breath, we can become more aware of our emotions and how we feel. By intentionally breathing, we can let our unconscious body know that we are okay and it doesn’t have to be as nervous, anxious, or worried. Intentional breathwork can be a way to influence our autonomic nervous system.
Our Autonomic Nervous System controls and manages our unconscious processes, including our heart rate, our blood pressure, our breathing, and our organs. Our Autonomic Nervous System regulates our body between three different physiological states:
Social engagement (alert and relaxed, playful and calm) - Balanced Nervous System
Fight or flight, alert and ready for action
Freeze or collapse, play dead, shut out the world
Our nervous system isn’t always clearly in one of the three buckets above, but we can oscillate between the three and have various combinations of them.
Breathing impacts our heart rate. Our Inhale breath speeds up heart rate, and our exhale breathe slows down the heart rate. The Inhale breath energizes the body, the exhale breath relaxes the body. We all have one heart rate pattern while we are inhaling. We have a different heart rate pattern while we are exhaling. The variation in our heartbeat frequency during inhales and the heartbeat frequency during exhales is called heart rate variability or HRV. Our HRV is an indicator of our nervous system health, capacity, and resilience. A larger heart rate variability signifies more balanced nervous system, a more optimally functioning body.
By intentionally slowing your breathing rate down, breathing softly. smoothly, and steadily, can bring more balance to your nervous system and increase your HRV.
Take a moment, check in with your own breath. How are you breathing? How does your breath vary throughout the day? How has your breath varied throughout your life?
