Controlled Breathing
If a pharmaceutical company could put the mental and physical benefits of controlled breathing into a pill, it would be most profitable drug ever created. But guess what - it's free, and you can administer a dose to yourself any time you want.
This activity is based on a short New York Times article, Breathe. Exhale. Repeat, which I like to assign to my students. The article explains how controlled breathing supports self-regulation. Science is just beginning to provide evidence that the benefits of this ancient practice are real: studies have found, for example, that breathing practices can help reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder.
Consciously changing the way you breathe appears to send a signal to the brain to adjust the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system (which can slow heart rate and digestion and promote feelings of calm) as well as the sympathetic system (which controls the release of stress hormones like cortisol).
Coherent Breathing
With coherent breathing, the goal is to breathe at a rate of five breaths per minute, which generally translates into inhaling and exhaling to the count of six. If you have never practiced breathing exercises before, you may have to work up to this practice slowly, starting with inhaling and exhaling to the count of three and working your way up to six.
1. Sitting upright or lying down, place your hands on your belly.
2. Slowly breathe in, expanding your belly, to the count of five.
3. Pause.
4. Slowly breathe out to the count of six.
5. Work your way up to practicing this pattern for 10 to 20 minutes a day.
*Bonus Content
After facilitating the breathing exercise above in your class, consider ending the session with a shared reading of Pablo Neruda’s poem:
“Keeping Quiet”
Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about...
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death..
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Extravagaria : A Bilingual Edition by Pablo Neruda (Author), Alastair Reid (Translator) Noonday Press; Bilingual edition (January 2001) page 26
