Balancing your mind and body supports your overall health and deep breathing, which you can do on its own or in mind-body exercises like yoga, Pilates, meditation, Tai Chi and QiGong can help.
Deep breathing included with mind and body exercises can help you lose weight, feel great, reduce stress, and be strong in body and mind.
The oxygen that you bring in through deep breathing from your abdomen and the toxins that you release when you exhale help to generate new cells keep you feeling great and maintain an optimal level of health both physical and mental.
Here’s six Mind/Body exercises for you to try:
1 – Yoga
The ancient practice of yoga continues to be one of the most popular practices in the modern world. In today, hectic modern world, it is easy to get lost in stress and all its side effects. Yoga and the deep breathing that goes along with it helps you stay present, calms the mind and provides more than a hundred different health benefits for mind, body and spirit.
Yoga helps keep your body strong, your mind focused, and your soul peaceful, and balanced. An integral part of yoga is structured breathing, which includes a high level of mindfulness in conjunction with taking deep breaths. The breath is an important part of yoga, and not only induces a state of calm in the mind; it also supports the poses that promote physical health.
2 – Pilates
The deep breathing used in Pilates is similar to yoga, but is more rapid and typically increases the heart rate more so than yoga does.
If you would like a more intense workout, yet still enjoy the mind and body connection in your workout, then Pilates is the thing to do.
3 – Meditation
Whereas yoga and Pilates both involve deep breathing and strengthening the mind and body with a more physical effort behind it, meditation is breathing in stillness, without movement.
Meditation is a less strenuous approach to deep breathing and mind body balance. Meditation uses deep breathing to help focus the mind towards calm and peace.
In a world of stress, mediation is a very valuable mind-body practice for balance and sanity.
Whether someone has physical limitations or other reasons why they cannot perform yoga or Pilates, meditation offers a great way to include deep breathing and all its benefits.
4 & 5 – Tai Chi and QiGong
These practices that feature slower moving variations of martial arts movements, involve slow meditative movement that is synced with the breathe. Imagine a slow dance, where you flow from one move to another.
Like yoga, the breathing patterns and methods in these practices are very specific and thoughtfully crafted to yield a state of calm, peace, and balance between the mind and body.
6 – Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is used in all of the above practices, and they include the process of inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. This provides oxygen for positive cell regeneration and the elimination of toxins in the body.
Simple deep breathing exercises can be done anywhere, and at any time and require no special equipment or physical effort, here is one example of a simple deep breathing exercise.
How to Deep Breathe
1. Let go of all thoughts
2. Breathe in through your nose
3. Hold that breath for about 3 seconds
4. Exhale through the mouth, exhale at twice the speed it took to inhale
Typically, it is suggested to use a 4:7:8 pattern: 4 seconds to inhale, 7 seconds to hold, and 8 seconds to exhale.
Do It Everyday
Deep breathing practiced every day in the form of any of these mind and body exercises, or by simply taking the time to repeat the above sequence several times a day can greatly improve your physical health and mental and emotional wellbeing.
You will never bored with all the choices in mind-body exercises, and when used with a healthy diet, and regular exercise you can achieve a high level of internal balance and balance is a known key to longevity.
