Taking a Breather

Tonight I headed of to my local Whole Foods for a talk on Balancing Hormones Naturally. He got up and introduced himself and immediately the women began asking questions. He answered a few of them and then smiled and said, "Before we get too far into our minds, let's all take a moment to close our eyes and take a deep breath." So, there we were in Whole Foods with our eyes closed, taking a moment for gratitude and slowing down the chatter in our mind.

So often we speed through life, scheduled to the limit. We have doctors appointments, dentist appointments, shopping, errands, cleaning, cooking, homework, chauffeuring our children to one event after the other, and on and on. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to load up our calendar with every to-do that there is to-do? And have you ever caught yourself in the midst of these high paced days taking a deep breath?

This is our natural response to stress. The body knows it needs to slow down. The body knows that it can't keep up this pace forever. The body know that the best way to release the stress it to slow down the breathing.

When we are in the midst of stressful situations our sympathetic nervous system is stimulated, causing a physical response. Our heart rate goes up, our muscles tense up and our breathing becomes fast and shallow. If we continue to go on in this way, over time we can find ourselves out of balance and physical symptoms can begin to show up.

Breathing is the only bodily function that we do both voluntarily and involuntarily. By choosing to slow down our breath we can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system which creates relaxation and reverses the effects of the stimulated sympathetic nervous system.

Now look, there are certain ways you "should" breathe to create relaxation for the body and I will dive into that further in a future post but let's be real here. If your body instinctively takes a deep breath when needed, we don't have to worry about getting it right. For now, just try to take some time everyday to take a few breaths. Don't wait for your body to cry out to you. When you're driving in the car, breathe deep and let it out. When you're standing in line at the store, breathe deep and let it out. When your home making dinner, helping the kids with homework, answering the phone, planning who needs to go where and when, and...

just breathe deep and let it out.