The way you breathe can have a more significant effect on your physical and emotional well being than you may realize. When you aren't thinking about your breathing, your sympathetic nervous system controls it automatically, but this can become a problem if you are under stress or feeling angry or anxious. By training yourself to control your breathing, you can change the way you breathe daily, which can be beneficial in helping you relax your body and mind.
Step 1
Pay attention to how you usually breathe. Rapid shallow breathing, or hyperventilation, increases your heart rate and can cause you to feel panicky, notes MedlinePlus. Additional effects include dizziness, chest pain, bloating, confusion, heart palpitations and muscle spasms.
Step 2
Conduct a simple exercise to find out if you are breathing shallowly from your chest or deeply from your abdomen. Place your right hand on your chest and your left hand on your abdomen and take several deep breaths. If your right hand rises more than your left hand, you are breathing from your chest instead of your diaphragm, which is less efficient at moving oxygen through your body, and is also less relaxing, notes the American Medical Student Association.
Step 3
Practice breathing with your diaphragm to become accustomed to what healthy breathing feels like; this will help you to notice when you unconsciously switch to shallow chest breathing. Lie flat on your back with your knees bent and place your hands on your chest and abdomen. Practice expanding your abdomen with each deep breath to engage your diaphragm in the breathing process, suggests the University of Maine Farmington's Center for Human Development.
Step 4
Schedule times throughout the day to check on how you are breathing, once breathing from your diaphragm begins to feel natural. Use posted notes or a watch alarm to remind you until checking on your breathing periodically until it becomes an ingrained daily habit. Take a moment to switch to diaphragmatic breathing whenever you notice yourself breathing shallowly from your chest.
