If nothing else, just breathe…

“Ok, well what’s the one thing that’s easy and cheap that I can do right now to improve my health?...”

I was sitting at the train station and an older man sat down and was making noises that he wanted to chat. Call me old-fashion but I like connecting with strangers (especially when they aren’t creepy). I was a full-time uni student at the time studying my bachelor of health science… in Naturopathy. Because of the sheer range of approaches to natural medicine in Australia it’s only natural that people don’t really know what the term means. The man was intrigued. He asked me, “ok, well what’s the one thing that’s easy and cheap that I can do right now to improve my health?”

It took me a second. What’s cheap, easy and completely accessible?

“Easy… breathe better”. He looked at me quizzically.

For the most part people breathe without thinking. Earth-shattering. It’s fun like that. Living is good (if only there were a type of font which could convey dripping sarcasm).

However, in the natural medicine world we talk a lot about the divisions of the nervous system and why we’d want to tap into parasympathetic nervous state (or “rest, digest and reproduce”). The way we breathe can directly impact whether we’re in this state or not by enervating cranial nerve X (the vagal nerve). A little-known secret is that I’m very lazy. I don’t generally go out of my way unless it has some direct benefit to me. So, if the way I’m breathing is contributing a freak-out, it pays to stop and have a think about it.

Breathing into the belly enervates the vagal nerve and can help the body calm down. Conversely, breathing into the chest enervates a different division of the nervous system (the sympathetic nervous state). Ever notice that athletes will do a few quick shallow breaths before competition? If you’re engaged in a sympathetic nervous state you can pump more cortisol and adrenaline.

When we’re born, we’re naturally born into the parasympathetic nervous state (that may not be true for the herculean woman who delivered you, but that’s a different story). We are naturally designed to be able to rest, digest and reproduce. So, if you’re feeling the slow and steady creep of panic, take a second – physically move away from what you’re doing, place a hand on your belly and breathe into it and watch what happens.

For more information about the vagal nerve, read this blog post.