AtoZ: Holistic Self-care: E is for Exhale

Have you ever been attentive to how you breathe? When you breathe do your shoulders move up and down, does your stomach expand and contract? Does your chest move slightly? How many breaths do you take a minute? Have you ever watched a baby breathe while they sleep?

Body:

A natural medicine doctor I visited in Hong Kong many years ago, encouraged me to breathe deeply — in through my nose and out through my mouth, causing my gut to expand with each inhale and to retract with each exhale.

Once I got the hang of it, this process helped my shoulders, stomach, and back muscles to relax. I noticed improved digestion, decreased cravings and emotional eating, and increased lung capacity when exercising.

Mind:

Taking long, deep, slow breaths also slows the mind. If you’ve practiced Yoga or TaiChi, or meditation in general, you know breathing is important to the meditative process. By slowing our breathing, we slow our mind.

We can enter what Deepak Chopra refers to as ‘slipping into the gap’ that helps us recognize our deepest desires and detach from them so that the universe takes…