What do stress and breathing have to do with each other?
Stress is an omnipresent phenomenon of our hectic lifestyle; not only in uncertain and upheaval times like we are experiencing right now. This makes it all the more important to stay in touch with ourselves and strengthen our resilience capacity.
Recognising the breath as the key to holistic well-being, inner balance and vitality is a first step. Far Eastern traditions have always taught us the importance of our breathing to maintain a healthy relationship between body and mind. Western medicine also knows the effects that prolonged stress has on our physical and mental health.
An adult human takes a breath 12 - 18 times per minute. This process happens on its own. We breathe mostly unconsciously and often superficially. What we forget is that our breathing continuously stimulates our autonomic nervous system. Our nervous system has a direct influence on how we feel mentally, emotionally and physiologically. Stress on the outside - in whatever form - leads to stress on the inside. Possible consequences include lack of concentration, fatigue, inner restlessness, irritability, sleep problems, depressive mood and the weakening of our immune system.
More and more people, and increasingly also companies, are recognizing the need for (preventive) stress-regulating "measures" for themselves and their employees. Mindfulness, yoga and meditation have lost the "new-age touch" and gained acceptance; probably also because their effectiveness for body and mind is now proven by scientific evidence.
After yoga, now Breathwork is gaining more and more popularity. There are different types of Breathwork. Their common feature is that conscious, connected breathing is used as a central element to activate the ability for inner self-awareness, self-regulation and self-healing. Breathwork enables us to expand our capacity to release, feel and contain the flow of our own life-force that is our breath.
Breathwork supports the increase of:
well-being, health, resiliency, capacity for copying with stress, mental clarity and inner balance, self- and body awareness, processing and integration of emotions, relaxation, inner harmony and presence.
and the decrease of:
Stress & stress-related symptoms (physical, mental and emotional), focus difficulties/attention deficit disorder, depressed mood & anxiety, chronic fatigue & insomnia and more.