Quick Tips: Deepen Your Breath

Your lead and follow coaching tip for today is Deepen your breath. 

Many of us are in the habit of shallow breathing, sometimes called chest breathing, where the collarbones and sometimes shoulders move up and down with each inhale and exhale. Because of tension in the muscles, or sometimes just because of the general speed of working life, our bodies can get used to a shallow, fast rhythm of breathing, using only a small amount of our lung capacity and giving us only a small amount of oxygen. Shallow breathing can also increase heart rate and blood pressure, making you feel anxious, or it can prevent CO2 from exiting the body, making you feel sleepy.  

There are lots of great breathing techniques out there to try, but my suggestion today is a very simple one. It’s to focus on the location of your inhale and exhale. More specifically, I’d like you to think about the location of the sensations of inhaling and exhaling. This is not a clinical anatomical question, and there’s no right answer. Rather it’s an imaginative exercise.

First notice where you are most aware of the feeling of your inhale and exhale. It might be your chest or belly, but it may be somewhere else, your nose for example. If the location is high, in your face or upper chest, try to gently shift the location down a few inches, imagining that the air was entering the filling your body lower down. Keep going down a few inches at a time until you reach your lower belly. Don’t overthink this exercise, just imagine air filling your body. 

If you’re already feeling your breath in your belly, you might imagine it expanding upward instead, filling also your middle abdomen and chest. Don’t force anything, just imagine opening more space for the air to flow in and out.

Not only does deep, full breathing reduce all kinds of anxiety and stress, research shows that it improves concentration and mental clarity as well. It will likely make you appear more relaxed and approachable to other people as well. 

Try this breath location exercise a few times throughout the day, maybe before and after meetings, or anytime you want to feel more calm, more centered, or more focused.  

Try this out, experiment, and let me know how it goes!