Deep Breathing Exercises And Life-Changing Benefits

Many people know that just taking a few deep breaths can calm you down and relieve stress. Fewer people, however, realize the many benefits to be had from regular breathing exercises.

Research shows that deep breathing routines, such as one finds when practicing yoga, truly benefit the lungs, COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and the heart. Your heart and lungs are intimately connected as breathing delivers oxygen to the blood. So, when the heart pumps oxygenated blood to all the body’s organs, including the brain, that’s good for your health.

Let’s take a look at some of the health benefits of breathing exercises.

Asian senior couple doing breathing exercise in open and natural air

Strengthen Your Lungs

COPD leads to the lungs becoming inflamed and damaged. Breathing becomes more difficult because airways have narrowed. This can be caused by smoking or long-term exposure to harmful fumes or dust.

Supervised breathing exercises can provide a pathway back to improved lung health. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are respiratory diseases that come under the blanket term COPD and imply damaged lungs.

Asthma is a chronic condition affecting the airways and hampering your breathing. As with bronchitis and emphysema, it is associated with coughing, wheezing and breathlessness. However, it is possible to manage all these conditions with medication, lifestyle changes, and breathing exercises.

Relax Your Mind With Breathing Exercises

Diaphragmatic breathing, with your mind focused on every inhalation and exhalation, can be profoundly relaxing. In addition, by concentrating only on the rise and fall of your diaphragm as you breathe, you dispel all thoughts and worries. Yoga is an ancient practice involving techniques that help you to focus on your breathing.

Deep breathing is a stress-busting and energy-giving activity but also one that is hugely beneficial for lung health. So, people with relaxed minds are free of stress, which is a known cause of ill-health, fragility, and death. That is why, a relaxed mind and a relaxed body go hand in hand and are two sides of the same coin.

Normalize your blood pressure

Breathing exercises not only calm you down and relieve stress, but they also improve blood circulation and blood flow. Such exercises stimulate blood pressure receptors in the chest wall and activate nerve reflexes that regulate blood pressure.

Normalize heartbeat

Taking measured, slow, deep breaths can help patients with arrythmia (a racing or pounding heart). The action of steady, slow, deep breathing allows the heart to normalize its heartbeat.

Fairview Rehab and Nursing Home in Queens NY specializes in offering medical care as well as outpatient and inpatient rehab therapies. Our therapeutic recreation classes, including yoga and breathing sessions are not only popular but highly beneficial for anyone with heart or lung problems. We’ve shown time and again that breathing exercises can have life-changing benefits.

We have state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. More importantly, we also have the most friendly and expert therapists you could hope to find.

Do contact us if you would like to find out more about our therapies, care services and recreation therapeutic classes. We are here to answer any questions you may have.

This article contains informational and educational materials and does not replace health or medical advice. For questions or concerns regarding your medical condition or health objectives, speak to a qualified physician or healthcare provider.