Election results made you anxious? Or overly excited? In either case, controlled breathing can bring you back to a comfortable, relaxing place. The New York Times tells us how it may work. One theory, the Times reports, “is that controlled breathing can change the response of the body’s autonomic nervous system, which controls unconscious processes such as heart rate and digestion as well as the body’s stress response.” Consciously changing the way you breathe, the paper reports, appears to send a signal to the brain to adjust the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, which can slow heart rate and digestion and promote feelings of calm as well as the sympathetic system, which controls the release of stress hormones like cortisol. The Times cites research by Dr. Chris Streeter, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Boston University, that measured the effect of daily yoga and breathing on people with diagnoses of major depressive disorder. Streeter found that after 12 weeks of daily yoga and coherent breathing, the depressive symptoms significantly decreased and levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid, a brain chemical that has calming and anti-anxiety effects, had increased.
Ready? Here, according to the Times, is how it’s done:
1. Sitting upright or lying down, place your hands on your belly.
2. Slowly breathe in, expanding your belly, to the count of five.
3. Pause.
4. Slowly breathe out to the count of six.
5. Work your way up to practicing this pattern for 10 to 20 minutes a day.