The Best Stress Buster!
Make stress your ally with breathing practice and a positive attitude, writes Nayaswami Gyandev.
We’ve all experienced how stress raises blood pressure and heart rate, and interfere with digestion and sleep. Chronic stress also increases inflammation, a major contributor to illness and inclines one towards anxiety and depression.
But there’s a way to counter these effects, and it’s free, simple, and takes very little time. Modern research has shown that a simple breathing practice from the ancient science of yoga can do this.
Method: Sit or stand erect, or lie supine. Breathe slowly, 4-5 breaths per minute without strain, diaphragmatically. Your belly expands on inhalation and relaxes on exhalation through the nose. Make your inhalations and exhalations of equal duration and concentrate on the flow of breath.
If it’s too slow for you, breathe a bit faster; with practice, it will become comfortable to breathe slower.
Pause now, and try it again. Even two minutes (8-10 breaths) of this practice bring benefits. Imagine the benefits if you breathe this way, even for short periods, multiple times each day.
This Simple Practice Has Several Benefits:
- Activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms and harmonises body and mind.
- Oxygenates the blood.
- Increases heart rate variability. Unlike the constant fast rate during stress, a healthy heart rate varies, even between inhalation and exhalation.
- Increases resilience from stress.
- Improves perceptual processing, as stress can distort sense perceptions.
- Improves memory.
- Promotes persistence of calmness.
- Increases willpower.
- Improves the quality of your decisions.