Breathing, with its life-giving properties, has been used as a healing art since ancient times. Only now, however, is it beginning to emerge from the realms of alternative health to gain increasing credibility and acceptance in the modern medical world. In fact, an accumulating weight of clinical research supports the benefits of therapeutic breathing in treating a whole spectrum of conditions. These range from digestive ailments to migraines to emphysema and other respiratory problems.
Breathing?s effect on a group of conditions related to blood pressure is especially impressive. These include hypertension itself, stress and sleep disorders, anxiety and even anger control. High blood pressure runs at the heart of all these conditions and is proving a key to their treatment as well.
What does this have to do with breathing? The evidence is conclusive: breathing slowly and deeply for 10 to 15 minutes a day while prolonging exhalation reduces high blood pressure. It should come as no surprise. The link between the circulatory and respiratory systems has been known since human beings have walked the earth. ?Take a deep breath? they always tell you in times of panic or great stress. Breathing slowly and deeply calms the heart and nerves as surely as eating sooths a growling stomach.
How this applies in an immediate way to things like anxiety and anger is probably obvious. Let?s take anger, for example. What happens when you lose your temper? Your heartbeat accelerates and your blood pressure quickly pegs out at max. The pressure inside you may build up until your face turns red. If nothing is done to relieve it you may end up ?blowing your top?.
That?s what blood pressure can do, but there?s more to it than just raging blood. What happens to your breathing? For all practical purposes you stop breathing. When you?re angry you inhale in short, sharp gasps or you may even hold your breath. In either case you neglect to exhale. Both your respiratory and circulatory systems become locked in tandem in a spiral of increasing pressure.
This is the time when a friend, mate or, hopefully, your own inner voice tells you, ?Take a deep breath?. For once you do that the vicious cycle immediately goes into reverse. On that first breath your blood pressure drops rapidly and the danger point, both internal and external, is passed.
Stress and anxiety disorders work in a similar way. The emotions may be different but the physical reactions are the same when experiencing extreme fear or panic. To regain breathing control is to relieve rising blood pressure and the adrenaline-burning demands on the body. Only then can you begin to think clearly and deal with the situation. (Of course this applies only to dysfunctional anxiety. When faced with a genuine fight or flight situation you want all the blood pressure and adrenaline you can get!)
So breathing becomes a frontline measure to relieve anxiety attacks and destructive levels of anger. Learning to remind themselves to breathe can be a powerful therapeutic tool for those experiencing these situations.
But there?s more to it than that. Breathing therapy is also useful at a deeper, long-term level. The real breakthrough in therapeutic breathing has come with the discovery that its effects on blood pressure are cumulative and begin to last throughout the day after several weeks practice. The result is a significant and lasting drop in blood pressure in just 4 to 6 weeks.
This provides a long term calming influence for those with stress, anxiety and anger disorders, who often also suffer from higher than normal blood pressure. What?s more, the breathing techniques become ingrained with practice and can become second nature, warding off unnecessary tension before it can accumulate: prevention before cure.
Of course this is a simplistic description of a very difficult problem. Anger and anxiety are a complex mixture of emotion and personality as well as physiology. But breathing therapy is proving extremely effective at more than one level. It offers fast relief of dangerous or disturbing excesses of pressure along with a longer-term gain of control and self-confidence through prevention. Simply learning to breathe may be at least as helpful as expensive medications and never-ending talking therapies.
David O'Hara is a researcher and product developer involved in the field of natural blood pressure control. For more information on breathing, blood pressure and associated issues see http://www.control-your-blood-pressure.com | |
