If you have ever struggled to fall asleep at night because your brain is swarming with anxious thoughts or the stresses of the day, you could benefit from a regular breathing practice. Deep breathing exercises lower stress and anxiety and prime the body and mind for sleep.
In addition to good sleep hygiene and habits, as well as other self-care and relaxation techniques, breathing exercises can help you relax and get to sleep. Learn more about the many benefits of breathing exercises, how and why they work, and ideas to get you started.
What Are Deep Breaths or Breathing Exercises?
Most of us never think about breathing until it is a problem. For instance, an asthma attack, a panic attack, or a hard bout of exercise can make you very aware of your breath and breathing.
Because we do it automatically, we rarely think about how important breathing is or how beneficial it can be to focus on it.
At the most basic level, breathing is what keeps us alive by bringing oxygen in to be pumped throughout the body. Each exhalation removes carbon dioxide from the body, which helps maintain the normal pH of the body.
Breath work draws attention to the act of breathing. Most focus on taking deep, slow breaths. Breath exercises are used for physical conditions, strengthening the lungs, or preventing pneumonia. They are also used for managing stress and other aspects of mental health.
What Are the Benefits of Breathing Exercises?
Many different types of exercises focus on breathing, including some for specific purposes. However, they all have certain common benefits for physical and mental health that are backed by research:
Reduce Anxiety
Focusing on your breathing can be a powerful antidote to anxiety. Studies of pranayama breathing and the breathing exercises used in yoga reduce anxiety and improve overall well-being. Even just a few weeks of regular practice can have a profound impact.
Manage Stress
Stress is the body’s response to perceived threats. As an evolutionary trait, stress has helped us survive. In modern times, however, our busy lifestyles trigger stress more often than we need, resulting in physical and mental health problems.
Deep breathing invokes the opposite of the stress response. It triggers the relaxation response, which provides an instant antidote to stress. Researchers have found that breathing exercises lower cortisol levels. Cortisol is the hormone associated with the stress response.
Build Mindfulness
Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment and taking focus away from worries or anxiety over the past or future. When your thoughts are firmly in the present, you get immediate benefits. When practiced regularly, you reap long-term benefits.
These include less stress and anxiety, improved mental health symptoms, better sleep, and improved physical health and well-being.
There is also evidence that mindfulness can help you resist cravings. For instance, if you tend to be an emotional eater, mindfulness can help you curb the habit.
Deep breathing exercises are a form of mindfulness, focusing on your body in the present moment. The more you practice it, the more mindful you will be in all aspects of your life.
Manage Chronic Health Conditions
Deep belly breathing, or diaphragmatic breathing, should never be a substitute for medical care, but it can supplement treatment for chronic respiratory conditions. Many of these conditions force you to take shallow breaths, resulting in a buildup of stale air in the lungs.
The diaphragm, which should do most of the work of bringing in the fresh air, can no longer function optimally in these situations. By focusing on taking deep breaths, you can increase oxygen intake and restore the diaphragm’s functions, improving symptoms of asthma and COPD.
How Does Deep Breathing Improve Sleep?
All the benefits of deep breathing and focused breathing exercises are beneficial for sleep. Stress, anxiety, and tension are all detrimental to sleep. If regular breath work improves these, you should sleep better.
Research shows that slow and deep breathing slows arousal, relaxes the mind and body, and improves insomnia. The arousal of the autonomic nervous system plays such a big role in insomnia by triggering an errant stress response. Deep breathing dampens it by slowing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and inducing a more relaxed state.
Breathing Exercise Sleep Aids to Try Tonight
Deep breathing can benefit anyone. Try breathing exercises if you have insomnia, a respiratory condition, or just too much stress to fall asleep some nights. If you have a medical condition or are diagnosed with insomnia, talk to your doctor about using these exercises to supplement care. They should never replace appropriate medical treatment.
4-7-8 Breathing
This is a simple technique for beginners and anyone looking to manage anxiety. It involves taking a deep breath but also gives your mind something to focus on and provides a distraction from stress and anxiety.
To do this exercise, breathe steadily through your nose to a count of four seconds. Hold your breath for seven seconds, and then forcefully exhale through your mouth for eight seconds. When exhaling, pursue your lips so it makes a whooshing sound.
Repeat this several times until you feel more relaxed but start slowly. Do one to four repetitions until you have gained more practice and feel comfortable doing it. The exercise can initially make you feel lightheaded.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
This is another simple but powerful breathing exercise that deeply focuses on breathing. Also known as belly breathing, it exercises the diaphragm, the muscle under your lungs. To do this exercise, sit or lie down with one hand on your belly and one on your chest.
Breathe deeply through your nose and feel your belly expand. You should not feel your chest rise at all. Exhale through your mouth, feeling the hand on your belly go down as the air leaves your body. At the end of the exhale, push gently on your belly to expel that last bit of air.
Box Breathing
Use simple box breathing when you don’t want to think too hard about how you will meditate or practice breathwork to relax. It is very easy to do. Sit in a comfortable position like you are about to meditate. Exhale while counting to four. Hold your breath to a count of four. Inhale to a count of four. Hold your breath again while counting to four.
Each four-count is like the side of a box. You can picture drawing the sides of a box as you do this breathing technique, or simply count to four and focus solely on your breaths.
Alternate Nostril Breathing
This type of breath control comes from pranayama in yoga. It is called Nadi Shodhana pranayama, and its purpose is relaxation. Don’t attempt nostril breathing if you are congested. It’s also best to do it on an empty stomach.
To do alternate nostril breathing, sit somewhere comfortable, as you would for meditation. Keep one hand on your knee and use the other to open and close the nostrils. Exhale through your right nostril and then close it with your thumb.
Inhale through the left nostril and then close the left nostril with your fingers. Open the right nostril again and inhale through it. Open the left nostril to exhale to complete one cycle. Repeat this for several cycles or up to five minutes.
Breathing Imagery
Add imagery to your breathing exercise for a more powerful anti-stress, anti-anxiety practice. This is useful if you are a visual person or need something additional to focus on as you try to shut out distractions.
Inhale deeply and picture goodness and calm air entering your body. As you exhale slowly, visualize tension and stress leaving your body. How you visualize this is up to you. Some people picture colored air, for instance, blue calm air for the inhale and tense red air for the exhale.
How to Make Breathing Exercise a Regular Habit
To reduce stress, manage anxiety, and sleep better, breathing exercises will help, but only if you do them regularly. Here’s how to make breathing techniques a habit.
Use an App
Apps like BetterSleep make it easier to meditate or practice breath control daily. You have a library of techniques and meditations right at your fingertips. If you’re stuck for ideas or feel you need guidance, just turn to the app.
Set an Alarm
It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness of the day and put breathing work on the back burner. Don’t get to the end of the day and realize you’ve run out of time. Set an alarm on your phone to remind you to take just five or ten minutes for your daily practice.
Keep a Journal
Keep a record of when and how you practice breathing techniques. Write down when you do it and how you feel before and after. Also, record how you slept each night. Seeing a pattern of improvement in your mood, wellness, and sleep will motivate you to keep going.
Try These Guided Breathing Exercises on BetterSleep
The BetterSleep app is a great resource for guided meditations and breath control exercises. Get the best of both worlds by making some of these breathing-focused meditations part of your daily routine to improve sleep:
- The Mindful Breath. This is a ten-minute mindfulness meditation with a focus on breathing. It will help you lodge your mind firmly in the present for a short relaxation practice to help you wind down and sleep better.
- Japanese Mood Breathing. If you’re interested in trying alternate nostril breathing but unsure where to begin, this is your guided practice. This adaptation of yoga nostril breathing takes just ten minutes to relax your mind and put you to sleep.
- Relaxing Morning Ocean Breath. This is another technique to try with guidance, as it is a little more complicated than box breathing or the 4-7-8 method. Ocean breathing is a pranayama practice that uses the constriction of the back of the throat for breath control. It’s a great practice for working through your asanas because it increases oxygen consumption. Try it during the day to feel more relaxed at night.
- Guided Deep Breathing for Sleep. This 12-minute bedtime practice will have you ready for sleep so fast that you will probably drift off with the meditation still playing. It guides you through deep breathing with a particular rhythm to tame stress and release tension.
- Breathing for Stress Release. You can use this guided breath work any time of day when you feel the most stressed. It will help you release tension, stress, and anxious thoughts in just ten minutes.
BetterSleep has these and many other guided meditations that can help you gain more control over your breathing and state of mind. Use them with sleep sounds, bedtime stories, and gentle exercise routines to fight insomnia and improve wellness.
