Just Breathe

"By knowing my breath, I know myself." ~Brother Phap Hu

In our last blog, we discussed how you can’t force inner peace, how it can only be cultivated over time with daily practice. How trying to relax can inadvertently create more tension inside. But that doesn’t mean that you are completely powerless over your inner state. In fact, there are things you can do right now to bring yourself out of stress and into balance. 

It begins by understanding that your nervous system is essentially a safety system. When it detects danger, it ramps things up so that you can either fight against the threat or run away from it as fast as you can. In times of stress, your heart rate and blood pressure increase, your breath becomes short and shallow and your muscles brace to protect you from potential harm. 

To bring yourself out of stress and into calm, this ramping up process needs to be reversed. However, heart rate and blood pressure are part of the autonomic nervous system, meaning they are not under your conscious control. Breathing is also technically an autonomic process, since it happens automatically in the background, without you having to think about it. 

While you can’t directly control your nervous system, you can influence it with the one thing you do have control over: your breath. Since you have control over your muscular system, and since the diaphragm is a muscle, you can consciously control how deeply and fully you inhale and exhale. 

Releasing tension in your diaphragm allows it to drop down away from the rib cage as you inhale and then gently rise back up on the exhale. When you breathe slowly and steadily like this for a few minutes, your nervous system will detect that you are no longer in danger and dial down the stress response accordingly. 

So, the next time you are feeling anxious, check in with your diaphragm. If it is locked up against your rib cage, then your chest will be tight and your breath will be shallow. By releasing the diaphragm and deepening the breath, you can easily guide your nervous system back into balance. It’s not the same as forcing yourself to relax, think of it as consciously creating the right conditions for relaxation to naturally take place.