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Slowing down your breath has many benefits, proven by science, for your brain and body. It’s one of the simplest ways to improve your health, both physically and mentally – and it’s free and not addictive. Here are five specific benefits:
Your brain is always on alert scanning its environment for potential threats. In the harsh world of our ancestors, this was an advantage that helped our species survive. However, with the constant, low-grade stressors of our pedal-to-the-metal society today, this almost constant stress response creates unhealthy conditions for your brain and body with serious lasting consequences.
Controlled breathing decreases your body’s stress response and is a potent tool you have to prevent the brain damage which can occur as the result of chronic stress.
As well as keeping the “breathing pacemaker” calm, slowing your breath activates your parasympathetic nervous system which is linked to stimulation of the vagus nerve—a nerve running from the base of your brain to your abdomen. There is scientific evidence to support the idea that anxiety, depression, inflammation, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease might be mediated by the vagus nerve.
Research has determined that the vagus nerve is part of a feedback loop between positive emotions, physical health, and positive social connections. Stimulating the vagus nerve has been shown to have a wide array of health advantages from helping depression, anxiety, headaches, and digestion to inflammation, chronic fatigue, arthritis, and more.
Research shows that when practiced regularly, controlled breathing causes your blood vessels to relax and widen which lowers blood pressure and heart rate. This improves health in many areas, including reduced risk of stroke and heart disease and may even help you live longer.
When deep breathing is incorporated into a regular meditation practice, your brain actually increases in size. People who routinely practice mindfulness meditation develop thicker layers of neurons in their insula — a region of the brain that activates upon tuning into your body and feelings — and in parts of the prefrontal cortex controlling attention. Meditation has also been found to increase gray matter density in a number of different brain regions, including the hippocampus, essential to memory.
By decreasing stress, anxiety, and depression, which have been shown to limit neurogenesis, deep breathing may also facilitate the birth of new brain cells.
Research has found that controlled breathing because it activates the relaxation response can even change the expression of your genes, specifically those involved in immune function, energy metabolism, and insulin secretion.
One study found more profound changes in long-term practitioners but detected measurable differences in gene expression after just 15 minutes. Another study determined that long-term practice of inducing the relaxation response, as done in slow breathing, resulted in changes to the expression of genes associated with how the body reacts to stress.
