Diaphragmatic breathing for stress relief

[The Back Seat]

In yoga and meditation (and life in general), all practices are centered around the breath. But are we breathing properly?

Many people are chest breathers. Chest breathing and stress (fight or flight response) are interconnected. Chest breathing gives us shallower breathes and requires more breathes to receive the same amount of air as diaphragm breathing.

Learning to breath with the diaphragm gives us more energy, and can be used to help us trigger relaxation which is important in yoga and meditation. Recently I have put all my attention toward strengthening my diaphragm with yoga breathing techniques. It helps with posture, stress, tension and is just what I needed.

[Clover]

Hey, The back Seat. Thank you for this. Good info.

Video explaining if anyone is curious. It's an amazing stress buster..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WMt_1jw47Q

[Uma]

In case anyone is interested in doing even more with the belly breathing, as part of a meditation practice, here's a link to one of my threads: breathe deep

[squirrel]

hey, I like to do deep abdominal breathing while consciously generating a beneficial state or emotion. Or while creating an intention or mental projection. The breathing energizes your intention and gives it life. Many healing modalities teach that you must do conscious deep breathing while doing healing work. as you lady who channels would always say "breathe with intention" but i never got it at the time. It took me a while to digest the idea of choosing how feel :)