Introduction: The Benefits of Deep Breathing for a Healthy Body
Deep breathing is a natural way to relax and calm the mind. It can also be used as an exercise to help reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Deep breathing has many benefits for our health. It can be used as a relaxation technique to lower stress levels, improve mood, and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.
In addition, deep breathing exercises can be used to help people with chronic pain or asthma. Deep breathing is a common method of controlling stress and anxiety. The immediate effects of deep breathing include an increase in oxygen to the heart and muscles, reduction in blood pressure, and a decrease in muscle tension.
There are also long-term benefits, including improved mood, better sleep patterns, and reduced hyperactivity levels in some children with ADHD.
As you can read there are a lot of good reasons on why we should start deep breathing, now let’s get to it and help you out a bit with the hard part, where to start.
Deep Breathing Techniques That Will Help You Live Healthily
For me, the most simple and useful way to get going is to (of course) use an app that will guide met through your breathing session. There are several ways to go on about this, and one is more extensive than the other for your session.
1. Oak IOS: https://www.oakmeditation.com/
What I really like about oak is that the breathing sessions they provide are quite short. This makes it easy to fill in somewhere in the busy daily schedule. You can just take a short moment to do a small, 1 or 2-minute session.
The app can set you up with a reminder at a timeframe, for me this is 14:30 in the afternoon. This is usually the moment my focus drops a bit and I do not want to immediately go to a cup of coffee. A box breathing exercise really helps me out at that moment!
2. The Wim Hoff Method: https://www.wimhofmethod.com/
I think most people would have heard from ‘The Iceman’ Wim Hof some way or another. These are deeper sessions, and you can combine them with the cold showers or ice bath. Using his app you can get some guidance on the breathing exercises and I would greatly recommend that to do. Only then I got to fully understand how it was supposed to go and feel. To keep using the app, you would need a membership. In my opinion, once you know the technique, it is not necessary to keep using his app. You always can if you want to support the team behind it though!
There is however another app that I use myself at the moment that follows the Wim Hof Method for your breathing. Deepbreathe.app is awesome for the purpose that you get a timer, and you get a rhythm to follow using the inhaling and exhaling part of the session. Note, this one you cannot find in the App Store or Play Store, you can however save the webpage to your home screen, and then it would behave as an app on your phone.
Conclusion
We have discussed the importance of breathing and how it can help relieve stress. It is a great way to promote a healthier lifestyle.
With the two apps and methods, I hope I can help you on your journey to get this going. Try to build a habit out of these exercises and see where it can take you. And if you find it difficult to reserve more time for a Deep Breathing session using the Wim Hof Method, just try to do a shorter one or two-minute session. For me, this is especially helpful on a busy work day where the stress might build up.
