Breathe in deeply through your nose to the count of 4 (your abdomen should expand, and then your chest), hold your breath to the count of 7, then exhale slowly through your mouth at the count of 8. Repeat 3x.

Breathing is extremely essential to life.

Once you learn to control your breathing, you learn to control your world.

Becoming conscious of your breathing is a stage I believe we all have to go through, a crucial one at that.

An exercise (yoga exclusive) without voluntary acknowledgment of your breathing can actually predispose you to injuries. Some people think breathwork is only attributed to yoga and swimming, however, breathwork is vital in all exercises, and not only cardiovascular ones.

Once you breathe, your body relaxes and gets prepared for whatever is to come.

Merriam-webster dictionary defines breathwork as conscious, controlled breathing done especially for relaxation, meditation, or therapeutic purposes. The key word here is especially, but an opportunity arises in an adjective hiding under the invincibility cloak, ‘holistic’.

Even though controlled conscious breathing is beneficial mostly in exercises, it can be applied to any aspect of your life, as long as you are living and breathing — from something as simple as calming down and collecting your thoughts whilst speaking, to relieving stress, all the way to improving your overall mood and outlook at any given moment.

Breathwork has also been scientifically proven to help people recover from chronic illnesses and diseases. The basic idea of breathwork is to release toxins and stress when you breathe out and nourish your mind and body when you breathe in.

Let me paint you a picture. When you breathe properly, you get more oxygen into your body. Oxygen is the most crucial ‘nutrient’ for the optimum functioning state of the foundational unit of our human organisms, the cell. What this simply means is that the cell requires enough oxygen, which you get from clean and unpolluted air, to perform at its best. So, the more oxygen you get into your system, the more toxins you get out, and the stronger and healthier your body will be. This is the same concept behind ozone therapies, hyperbaric chambers, and on a more practical and ‘recommended-by-me’ level, having plants around the house or frequenting parks and gardens.

A collection of cells form a tissue, and a collection of tissues forms an organ (for example, your lungs). A collection of organs forms a system, e.g. your respiratory system, which incidentally is coiled like a DNA helix strand with the circulatory system in terms of function and interdependency (you can think of it as their ‘circuits’ being intertwined together — they rely on each other). The circulatory system is where you have your heart and where terms like high blood pressure and congestive heart failure originate from. When the cell works fine, your entire organism is healthier and also works well.

But when it comes to exercise, the major benefit you get from breathing is that it enables your muscles to contract and relax fully before and after every stretch, extension, or movement. As mentioned earlier, your body works in sync with oxygen (it is the first act), so allowing it to guide your various exercises would put you in great stead to get the best out of your activities.

One key arena where breathwork has paid me dividends is maintaining a healthy pulse rate. Since I became consciously aware of my breathing about ten to fifteen years ago, I have always maintained a low normal pulse, and I am much calmer generally. But it did not come easy, as there was actually a period when I would be sort of at odds with my body as to whether the breathing should be controlled by the respiratory center i.e, involuntary control, or by me actively using my diaphragmatic muscles. Sometimes, I would just feel like my breathing rhythm had stopped and I would have to in a sense, ‘reconfigure it or have to take the next breath consciously. However, this was a very minute juncture and once I scaled through this phase, it was smooth sailing from there on.

A good breathing exercise that I learned many years ago (still popular and also used in meditation) is the 4–7–8 breathing technique. An easy skill to get your breathwork going, this breathing pattern has been shown to help slow down the heart rate and calm the nervous system; it essentially brings with it a feeling of peace. As I mentioned above, mastering your breathing takes time, but as with anything, our bodily systems are wired to adapt to information and actions as long as the attempted consolidation is persistent. This is the same concept with ‘unwiring’ any unwanted patterns, so to speak; by this, I am referring to overcoming addictions like refined sugar and smoking. My tip for you is that whenever you feel any sort of diaphragmatic asynchronicity, just become mindful and take slow and deep breaths; your muscles and nerves would calm down, and your breathing would pick up its natural rhythm.