Breath AS Medicine: Stress Event - Stress Recovery = STRONG VAGAL TONE

The trouble with stress . . . it’s all in our heads. Well, and our brains.  Technically, it’s created in the mind/body/brain.  It’s a psychological, physiological and biochemical response to our thoughts, feelings and emotions.

The optimization of breathing is a means to improving our health as breathing rates & patterns influence our biochemical, biomechanics, psychological or physiological response from the body/mind/brain.  Therapeutic yoga breathing (or Pranayama) is arguably the most comprehensive approach we have to reducing stress and building physical & psychological resiliency. Pranayama is the “regulation of breath with certain techniques and sequences” where the breath is intentionally altered in order to produce specific results.  

To appreciate the role of mindful yoga breathing as a tool in stress reduction, prevention and recovery, it’s important to understand the relationship between nasal breathing, the relaxation response, the vagus nerve and the function of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls the function of the many of the systems and organs being negatively affected by stress AND the drivers of chronic illness.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover how mouth breathing and shallow nasal breathing influence completely different responses from our autonomic nervous system
• Understanding the role of the nasal cycles as they relate to our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
• Apply techniques to stimulate the vagus nerve and strengthen vagal tone
• Build resilience with recovery breathwork techniques

Discover your "life with breath" applying "breath AS medicine" in stress reduction.