Breathing is an incredible tool in everyday life, and also an absolute necessity! You don’t even have to THINK about breathing, and your brain will tell your body to do it for you – how amazing. That automatic breath is a ventilatory function, but breathing also has other functions well (6), and is influenced by emotions – relaxation, relief, pain, fear, and more (3, 4, 5).
In yoga, breath is used a lot throughout classes as a conscious function. Whether it’s used as a grounding tool to bring you into a certain headspace. Or if it’s used during physical practice and movement to help flow fluidly between poses.
And when we do consciously breath, the benefits can be profound. From anxiety reducing, to immune enhancing, and much more in between. I’ll focus on the immune system in this post.
"Physiological Sigh"
Sighing, or a deep breath in followed by a long exhale, is super beneficial, and necessary, for optimal lung function. Sighing can expand the lungs quite a bit, preventing the collapse of alveoli (tiny air sacs in the lungs) (1, 2).
Even the immune response can be influenced by breathing (7), ultimately decreasing proinflammatory responses in the body. Though there are few studies showing this, and not all of them have controlled for every aspect of an individual’s life, the results are promising, and just goes to show how incredible our breath really is.
It has been pointed out that perhaps this “physiological sigh” is most beneficial immediately after activating the sympathetic nervous system (flight or fight). This deep breathing was shown to reduce those proinflammatory markers, and enhance the body’s response as it activated the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest, or, breed and feed) (6, 7).
Final Remarks
Now, it isn’t natural for us to breathe deeply, and it isn’t necessary to walk around life only deep breathing. The exercise of deep breathing and breathwork once a day, or a few times a week, can have a great effect on physical well being and your mental state.
The next time you are feeling stressed or anxious, try to breathe deeply, take a sigh! And see how you feel after.
References
- Cammarota, Gianmaria, et al. “Influence of lung collapse distribution on the physiologic response to recruitment maneuvers during noninvasive continuous positive airway pressure.” Intensive care medicine 37.7 (2011): 1095-1102.
- Koch, Henner, et al. “Stable respiratory activity requires both P/Q-type and N-type voltage-gated calcium channels.” Journal of Neuroscience 33.8 (2013): 3633-3645.
- Abelson, James L., et al. “Persistent respiratory irregularity in patients with panic disorder.” Biological psychiatry 49.7 (2001): 588-595.
- Vlemincx, Elke, et al. “Why do you sigh? Sigh rate during induced stress and relief.” Psychophysiology 46.5 (2009): 1005-1013.
- Teigen, Karl Halvor. “Is a sigh “just a sigh”? sighs as emotional signals and responses to a difficult task.” Scandinavian journal of Psychology 49.1 (2008): 49-57.
- Ramirez, Jan-Marino. “The integrative role of the sigh in psychology, physiology, pathology, and neurobiology.” Progress in brain research 209 (2014): 91-129.
- Kox, Matthijs, et al. “Voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and attenuation of the innate immune response in humans.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111.20 (2014): 7379-7384.
