Hacking Your Nervous System With Breathing

Feeling angry or anxious? Try this!

You may have heard about fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest.

Well, fight-or-flight lives in our sympathetic nervous system. Here, you are in a ‘hyper-arousal’ state, and you may feel angry, irritable, anxious, and/or afraid here.

Rest-and-digest lives in our parasympathetic nervous system. Here, we can relax and feel safe, as well as problem solve and effectively communicate.

So, how can we get ourselves into our parasympathetic nervous system?

Breathing.

You read that write! 

Breathing.

When we inhale, we are in our sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight).

When we exhale, we are in our parasympathetic nervous system (rest-and-digest).

ALSO, we cannot be in our sympathetic nervous system and our parasympathetic nervous system at the same time.

SO, if we have a longer exhale than inhale, then we can be in our parasympathetic nervous system longer than our sympathetic nervous system.

AND, if we focus on breathing with an extended exhale over a period of time, we can help bring our bodies down from an escalated state, and work towards achieving a sense of calm. 

Doing this throughout our day, even for a few minutes at a time, can make a HUGE difference in our nervous system!