Today I want to spend some time talking about breathing – how important it is to feeling our very best from the inside out, and spend some time explaining how breath in the physical body plays a big role in feeling truly confident on the inside, as well as exhibiting that confidence to the world around us.

Being aware of your breath, and using it consciously can play a very helpful part in your day-to-day mindset, stress management, and overall health. So let’s get into it.

Why Breathing Helps the Body

Obviously – breathing is something that we just do. It comes naturally to us, it keeps us alive, literally. But we take it for granted and we don’t use it, I mean, really use it as often as we should. In the busyness of our day to day lives, we forget to take the time to breathe, which is unfortunate since breath is the body’s natural stress reliever!

At a biological level, deep breathing is not only relaxing, it’s also been scientifically proven to affect the heart, the brain, digestion, the immune system, and maybe even the expression of genes, according to a study published on NPR. According to Mladen Golubic, a Physician in the Cleveland Clinic Center for Integrative Medicine, breathing can have a profound impact on our physiology and our health.

“You can influence asthma, you can influence chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, you can influence heart failure,” Golubic says. There are studies that show that people who practice breathing exercises and have those conditions, they benefit.”

Furthermore, research has shown that breathing exercises can have immediate effects by altering the pH of the blood or changing blood pressure. But more importantly, calming breathing exercises can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones.

So to put it in perspective, integrating deep breathing and calming breath exercises into your daily routine can help sooth stress, improve your mood, and boost your confidence.

Here’s a quick challenge for you: At the top of every hour today, close your eyes and do five square breaths. Square breathing refers to a style of deep breathing where you inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Think about it like a square – inhale, hold, exhale, hold – four words that mimic the four sides of a square. Square breathing is a simple, easy, and effective way to calm yourself and enjoy a few minutes of tranquility in your day.

So at the top of each hour today plant both feet firmly on the floor, whether you’re sitting or standing, close your eyes and complete five square breaths. Follow this breath count. Inhale two, three, four, hold two, three, four. Exhale two, three, four, hold two, three, four. And repeat. Set a timer if you need to to make sure that you do it every hour. This exercise will help you soothe away tension during a stressful work day, refocus your attention, and re-energize you when you need it most.

I remember when I first shared this exercise with my dad, he tried it and he said, “Oh my gosh, I almost passed out doing that square breathing exercise,” because it’s definitely an adjustment to the way that we normally breathe! We normally don’t really pay attention to our breathing, and as a result, it tends to be very, very shallow. So making a mindful, purposeful adjustment to deep breathing, holding that breath, and just repeating that cycle is definitely a change.

How to Use Breathing to Fight Anxiety

As I was writing this blog post, I was actually reminded of a very personal experience that I had with the power of breathing several years ago. Several years ago, I had a very extreme, very painful bout with migraines. And for those of you who have dealt with migraines before, you know how horrible they are.

Just to tell you a little bit about why I think I started getting these migraines, – this was several years ago – I had just started my first agency job. I had got this job knowing that I didn’t necessarily have the right experience and I was going to be learning a lot on the job. It was my first SEO job, and I was very, very stressed. And being a high performer, and somebody who typically, and especially in the past, put a lot, A LOT of pressure on myself to always be performing in peak form, even though I was expected to learn on the job, I was holding myself to this crazy standard, and through a culmination of a lot of different things, I had my first migraine episode.

I woke up one day to go to work, and the entire side of my body was fully numb, and I kind of just felt the sensation travel up and down my body, and my arm was numb, and it was very scary. My husband Mike was living in Italy at the time, we did the whole long distance thing for a year and a half when he was in the navy, and I was trying to text him to tell him what was happening, but I couldn’t actually think of the words that I wanted to say.

So I would want to say something, and I’d go to type it, and I couldn’t think of how to spell it, or the word would just escape me, and I just couldn’t think. And I eventually became very nauseous, started throwing up, and it just was a very, very scary episode. My best friend ended up coming over and taking me to the ER, and it was just a horrible, horrible day, I was in so much pain. And unfortunately, I had these episodes every few days for a month. It was awful. I ended up going back to the ER at least one other time. I got into essential oils and all this stuff to try to stop and prevent migraines from happening, because it was so, so painful, and wreaking havoc on my life. And then, after a month – I didn’t have them anymore. And I haven’t had one since! It was so crazy.

In the process, one thing I learned that really helped me was breathing.

On certain mornings, I would wake up and I would have that very scary arm feeling, that tingling numbness that I knew meant that one of these migraine episodes was coming on, my heart would be beating very rapidly, and I would be very anxious. I found that if I just started to take very deep, slow breaths, which was hard to do because I was very stressed and nervous that the episode was going to happen, but if I focused on taking very deep, slow breaths, my heart rate would slow down, and the numbness and the tingling in my arm would go away, and I would not have an episode.

Calming yourself down enough to stop and to breathe is the hardest thing to do when you’re in a situation where you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m about to experience this horrible pain,” right?! But it really was the difference maker for me. Realizing the connection between anxiety, increased heart rate – the tension that ultimately culminated in very painful migraines, and the control I had over it by forcing my heart rate to slow down with slow, deep mindful breathing, changed everything!

Do Not Underestimate The Power of Your Breath

So remember: “Do not underestimate the healing power of breathing.” And I can say from personal experience, which I just shared, that it really is true. So if breathing can do that for my anxiety in such a potentially perilous situation, imagine how it can also do the same for you and your anxiety as you are about to go into a job interview, or about to go give a speech, or about to do something where you are very nervous and your heart rate is very heightened. Your breathing can make a huge, huge impact!

So don’t underestimate the power of breathing. Give yourself time today to practice those deep, slow, healing breaths, and just take note of how you feel, because I bet that you will feel a lot better and a lot more at ease and at peace as the day goes on.