The Benefits of Deep Breathing
Why deep breathing is good for us and why we need it in the classroom.
Way back when, if there was a tiger outside our cave, our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) would be activated to help us run faster. We wouldn’t need to digest food when we were running from the tiger, so our digestion would switch off, and we would breathe fast, shallow breaths to oxygenate the body so as not to become a tiger snack. Once the tiger had left, we then calmed down and our parasympathetic nervous system would switch back on- helping us to literally rest and digest again.
The problem is, there are lots of things in our lives that stress us out now, and so we are staying in this fight-or-flight mode more than we should- basically, the tiger is no longer leaving the cave! This is having a negative effect on our health by causing us to only take these short, shallow chest breaths.
And why is chest breathing a problem?
Shallow breathing limits the diaphragm's range of motion. The lowest part of the lungs doesn't get a full share of oxygenated air. That can make you feel short of breath and anxious. (Harvard Health, 2020)
Yikes.
Deep breathing has been scientifically proven to be good for us.
Reduces anxiety by calming the nervous system down (Chen et al., 2017)
Reduces the levels of stress hormones in the blood by encouraging diaphragmatic breathing (Knurek, S., 2018)
Raises RSA (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), helping students to regulate their emotions (Obradovic et al., 2021)
Deep Breathing also helps us to focus –
Most of us could not sit in silence for a few minutes and not think! Thinking is our super power but it can also be a weapon when we are stuck in a negative thought pattern. Focusing on the sound of the breath, or the movement of the breath in the body, gives our busy thinking mind something else to focus on other than what we should have said in a conversation we had three weeks ago (admit it, we all think about that stuff!).
Shockingly though, most of us do not breathe from our bellies any more.
One theory is that we struggle with deep belly breathing because of body image. According to Harvard health, our culture values a flat stomach, and so we all walk around holding our stomach muscles in! This interferes with our ability to breathe deeply, and gradually makes shallow ‘chest breathing’ seem normal. (Harvard Health, 2020).
So, what can we do about this? The first step is to become aware of how you are breathing. The second is to be guided into some simple breath-work so that you start to find a deeper breath.
It is important to breathe lightly when deep breathing because for some, heavy breathing can exacerbate feelings of anxiety. So, care must always be taken when navigating breath-work- this is why being guided is a good idea!
The best part with breathing is that you don’t need any equipment or fancy Lulu lemon pants, so it can be done anywhere. You don’t need much time, you just need to be guided properly… and that’s where we come in!
Here at The Teen Yoga Project, we are pretty obsessed with breathing!
Brain Breaks has six 5 minute breath work exercises that allow you to press play, reset the room and be back to your work within minutes. In The emotion Series, there are 14 longer breathing exercises (10-30 minutes) that are supported by classroom handouts, journal prompts and classroom discussion questions, so you can use these as curriculum content in PDHPE.
Here is an exert of a breathwork exercise from The Emotion Series - Box Breath!
Of course breath work won’t just help the teens destress, it will help your staff destress too!
Unlimited membership would give you access to all 20 breath work exercises, plus the other 50 body (yoga) and mind (welfare) exercises- that’s a lot of regulation work at your finger tips! To find our more and get access to Brain Breaks for FREE for a month, head to our website!
Bibliography
Chen, Y.-F., Huang, X.-Y., Chien, C.-H. and Cheng, J.-F. (2017), The Effectiveness of Diaphragmatic Breathing Relaxation Training for Reducing Anxiety. Perspect Psychiatr Care, 53: 329-336. https://doi.org/10.1111/ppc.12184
Harvard Health. (2020). Relaxation Techniques: Breath control helps quell errant stress response.
Knurek, S. (2018). Understanding cortisol, the stress hormone. Michigan State University.
Obradovic, J., Sulik, M., Armstrong-Carter, E., (2021). Taking a few deep breaths significantly reduces children’s physiological arousal in everyday settings: Results of a pre-registered video intervention. Development Psychobiology, Vol. 63(issue 8). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/dev.22214