Yogic Breath Can Health Relieve Depression

If you've ever been in a yoga class, they most likely cued you to focus on your breath, this is done not only to make sure you're getting oxygen in your body, but also to increase mindfulness. In addition, the practice of deep breathing stimulates our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), responsible for activities that occur when our body is at rest. It functions in opposite to the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates activities associated with the flight-or-fight response. In other words, breathing deeply/using yogic breath signals your nervous system (including your BRAIN) to relax and rest.

By making the choice to voluntarily change the rate, depth, and pattern of our breathing, we can change the messages being sent from the body’s respiratory system to the brain. These messages from the respiratory system have a rapid, powerful effects on major brain centers involved in thought, emotion, and behavior.

Here are three ways to practice yogic/deep breathing to help relieve depression:

Coherent Breathing

This breath is achieved by counting to five inhaling and count to five exhaling. These five-minute rate breathing maximizes the heart rate variability (HRV), a measurement of how well the parasympathetic nervous system is working.  The higher the HRV the better because a higher HRV is associated with a healthier cardiovascular system and a stronger stress-response system.

Resistance Breathing

Resistance breathing is exactly what its name suggests: breathing that creates resistance to the flow of air.  So, simply breathe out of our nose, to create more resistance than breathing through the mouth. and Inhale deeply and slowly in this way.

Breath Moving

An example of Breath Moving is as follows:

As you breathe in, imagine you are moving your breath to the top of your head. As you breathe out, imagine you are moving your breath to the base of your spine, your perineum, your sit bones. Each time you breathe in, move the breath to the top of the head. Each time you breathe out, move the breath to the base of the spine. Breathe in this circuit for ten cycles.

Try it out for 5-10 minutes a day and record your results each day, to see if you are making any progress.

How To Create A Healthy Positive Body Image

One of the missions I have in life is to help encourage people create a healthy, positive body image. The first step to this mission, is to practice myself, the second is to educate, and finally help emotional healing to occur.

So, I've done work on myself with therapist and will continue to allow my journey and story to evolve. With this practice of self-love I continuly propel myself to be in means slowing down, eating a balanced diet and practicing yoga. Today I want to address how helpful it can be to your mental health and body image, to create and cultivate a yoga practice.

Yoga And You

Find a teacher and a space to do yoga where diversity and inclusion is celebrated. Stay focused on what makes your body feel good. There are classes where having a certain body, or "nailing" the pose isn't the point of the class, those are the classes I encourage you to find. It may take a few times, but I know they are out there.

One of the first tenants of yoga is ahimsa (nonviolence)—do no harm to yourself or others. The media often is creating unrealistic images of beauty that is harmful to you. Therefore, it’s up to you to set those images aside, love yourself and be kind to yourself. You are beautiful as you are.

In your physical asana practice, focus more on what you can do and less on trying to be perfect at it. Mainstream media will continue to post picture perfect images, but I encourage you to change the esthetic and broaden the idea of what yoga looks like. There are entire organizations calling for yoga to be more about the practice and less about the body. In addition here in Denver there are even instructors that focus on being diverse, such as big booty yoga. I encourage you to post pictures of yourself doing your poses, to help break down what others believe about body image and yoga, as well as to celebrate you just doing you!

The Body Positivity Movement

There are a few tenants to the body positivity movement, including encouragement of youth and adults to reconnect with their bodies innate wisdom for more balance in not only they way they treat their bodies but also the way the see their bodies. This movement is focused on creating a world in which people are liberated from self-hate, and value their unique beauty.

Body positivity goes beyond just your body size, its means loving all ages, sizes, sexual orientations, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and socioeconomic levels with a whole-person, non-shaming approach to the mystery and miracle of living in a human body.

This message in valuable, because negative body image is linked to poor overall life quality.  Leading to poor self-care, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-harming behaviors (e.g., cutting, suicide), substance abuse, weight cycling, and relationship violence. There is true concern about these harmful behaviors in teens and young adults, which is why it is imperative to everyone create positive relationships with their physical selves in order to achieve their full potential.

So what would it look like if you reimagined beauty? How would you feel about telling yourself that you are beautiful in the mirror everyday for the next 5 days? You may think its radical to even attempt to believe it, and yet its true. 

5 Ways to Boost Your Mood

1. Create more YOU time, do things you love rather than things you "have to"

2. Practice a Digital Detox, stay away from your phone, computer, tv, gaming system for an entire day or two. Only allowing yourself 30 minutes each day to check your email or phone to make sure there are no emergencies 

3. Spend time with the people you love and that love you back. Allow work, and your to-do list to float out of your mind when spending quality time with your loved ones

4. Get enough sleep, and eat well

5. Organize the space you're in, having a clear space can help you have a clear mind