Breathe in, breathe out

We don’t realize how much healing, release, and freedom is available to us if we just remember to deepen our breath and slow it down many times during the course of our day.

In the practice of the Ha Breath, the exhalation is longer which helps you bring your nervous system into a parasympathetic state. You will be invited to contract your throat on the exhalation, making the ocean sound “Haaaaaaaa.”

The group trained by Hof were able to control their heart rate, temperature, and immune response, and stimulate the sympathetic system. This practice of heavy breathing along with regular cold exposure was later discovered to release the stress hormones adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine on command. The burst of adrenaline gave heavy breather

Big Exhalation Inhale as much as you can, hold that inhalation for a few seconds, and then exhale slowly while relaxing. A big inhalation really expands your lungs, requiring a big exhalation to bring the lungs back to their resting size. This stimulates the PNS, which is in charge of exhaling.

Parasympathetic activation is the normal resting state of your body, brain, and mind.

You can activate the PNS in many ways, including relaxation, big exhalations, touching the lips, mindfulness of the body, imagery, balancing your heartbeat, and meditation.

I found a library’s worth of material. The problem was, the sources were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old.

Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400 BCE focused entirely on breathing, how it could kill us or heal us, depending on how we used it. These manuscripts included detailed instructions on how to regulate the breath,

example, take five breaths, inhaling and exhaling a little more fully than usual. This is both energizing and relaxing, activating first the sympathetic system and then the parasympathetic one, back and forth, in a gentle rhythm. Notice how you feel when you’re done. That combination of aliveness and centeredness is the essence of the peak performa