Elevate Your Breathing Practice [End-of-Year Breathing Challenge: Part 3]
The often missing component that will get you hooked
Yesterday, while on a plane and preparing to land, I used my breath coach app for a 20-minute slow breathing session. Instead of my usual jitters, I felt relaxed.
As I mentioned in this post, slow and deep breathing gets me back to sleep when I can’t go back every time.
When I had a brief bout of heartburn, increasing my slow breathing to three times a day, kissed it goodbye. Yeah, there are studies on that.
This simple, portable tool has truly been a game changer for me.
But one key is to do it long enough. What actually got me hooked on slow and deep breathing was doing it during 16 minutes in a meditation.
As a lifelong anxiety sufferer, it felt like the first time I truly felt calm. And even though anxiety still visits me, I feel calmer in my daily life from my breathing practice.
Most of what we hear about breathing is to do it for just a few minutes to center ourselves. However, research shows that the benefits increase when we extend both the duration and frequency of the practice.
To wrap up our year-end breathing challenge, let’s take a closer look at the timing and frequency of these practices.
Slowing spontaneous respiration
As mentioned in the last post on diaphragmatic breathing, the benefit of having a breathing practice extends beyond how one feels in the short-term.
If done enough and often, it can change the way one breathes and uses oxygen at rest. By focusing on using your diaphragm, you’re strengthening this important muscle, which helps your everyday breathing.
It also will lower the number of breaths you take at rest. Dr. Louise Oliver also says this is helpful during sleep, because it keeps our nervous system dialed down.
In a 2021 study with 59 adults, researchers had the subjects do six breaths per minute for 5, 10, 15, and 20 minutes and measured their spontaneous breathing after.
You can see the times below. First, what their breathing rate was at baseline (the first number), the breaths per minute they practiced and their breathing rate after.
5 minutes – 16.7 – 6.58 breathes/minute - 14.18 (post)
10 minutes – 16.71 – 6.57 – 13.16
15 minutes – 17.05 – 6.53 – 12.16
20 minutes – 16.91 – 6.50 – 11.14
These findings promote SPB as an effective strategy to decrease respiratory frequency, even during brief intervals, while long-term interventions may provide chronic increases in CVA [cardio vagal activity].
The absence of long-term studies makes it difficult to fully understand the impact of slow-paced breathing on respiratory rate. However, by practicing consistently—once or twice a day—our body learns to breathe more slowly over time.
Adding time and frequency
Research suggests that practicing slow breathing twice daily yields better results than once daily.
In the study I talk about in the first post on Alzheimer’s markers the participants were doing it twice a day for 20-40 minutes.
For hot flashes, those doing it twice a day had a steeper decline in their menopause symptoms, than those doing it once a day.
This is also true if you’re looking to lower blood pressure—longer sessions and twice a day show better results.
That doesn’t mean that people have to do it twice a day, but that extending the time and frequency can increase benefits.
This, in turn, may make you want to do it more.
Benefits to lowering respiratory rate
Researchers from the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison collected data from 256 participants (18-65). There were 42 meditators, 133 non-meditating adults without asthma, and 70 non-mediating adults with asthma.
After mindful based stress reduction training, a one breath per minute slower respiratory rate linked to 1.83 higher psychological well-being.
This held true for both novice meditators and long-time mediators without asthma. They also found a larger reduction in respiratory rate (RR) showed larger improvements, including medical-related symptoms.
The researchers conclude:
…this research provides support for RR as a biomarker for self-reported well-being in the context of wellness training, and preliminary evidence for HRV as a more general, but less plastic, well-being biomarker
While the research is still in its early stages, and many studies are relatively short term, I can’t help but wonder about the long-term effects of sustained breathing practices on overall health and well-being.
How many midlife women would greatly benefit from such a simple and effective activity?
Now, let’s dive into the final part of the End-of-Year Breathing Challenge.