As a mom, you may not only find that your stress levels significantly increase during the day, but you sometimes don’t even have time to breathe. Learning how to breathe to reduce stress is important! While this is mostly a metaphor – you may actually be breathing incorrectly. According to Organic Lifestyle Magazine, most people don’t know how to breathe properly When you’re doing it right, you’ll notice an improvement in both your physical and mental health.

There are several benefits of breathing through your stomach. The American Medical Student Association states that abdominal breathing is also referred to as diaphragmatic breathing. When you practice and master stomach breathing, you can expand your lung’s air pockets and improve blood flow. Other natural stress relief techniques are also helpful in tandem with proper breathing. By utilizing your lungs’ maximum capacity, you can help stave off infections. Learning to breathe through your stomach also helps to stimulate your body’s relaxation response and can decrease stress while improving your overall well-being.

Learning To Breathe to Reduce Stress – Proper Technique

• Most people take fast, shallow breaths. Rather than breathing through our stomachs using our diaphragms, we raise our shoulders and only fill the top portions of our lungs. By allowing your ribcage to expand, you can fully inhale and thereby exhale toxins and carbon dioxide.
• You can practice learning how to breathe with a couple of different methods. First, try expanding your belly as you breathe in. By doing this you’ll be able to completely fill your lungs with air. Next, pull in your belly when exhaling.
• Be sure to breathe deep and slow. To get the best breaths, try to take four each minute and think about quality rather than quantity.
• Deliberate breathing should be done as much as possible. If you’re feeling particularly stressed one day, use this breathing technique as a tool to calm yourself down.

Babies are a great example for learning how to breathe, watch their stomachs go up and down as they use their lungs to the fullest!

Have you tried diaphragmatic breathing? Did it reduce your stress?