Are you truly breathing?

Explore the importance and power of breath with Speech and Language Pathologist, Lorena Qualizza, and scroll down for some easy tips on how to kickstart healthier breathing, today!

Breath is the anchor to our existence. The rhythmic cycle of breathing - the nourishing benefits of inhalation and the cleansing properties of exhalation -  is not only critical for our survival but the gateway to healing transformation and spiritual practice. Cultivating breath with awareness and intention can trigger a cascade of benefits including regulating the central nervous system and supporting overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

We take approximately 24000 breaths per day - how could this rhythmic cycle of inhalation and exhalation not impact our body’s functioning? As a society, we have lost the ancient art and knowledge of breathing - the very breathing our ancestors (pre-industrial) practiced and used to maintain equilibrium in their central nervous system and live with a quality of life that enabled their wide and open airways to facilitate unobstructed breathing, sleep without disturbances (no snoring!), and move optimally.

In our modern culture, however, as we have moved further and further away from these ancient practices, our facial structures changed substantially enough to affect how we breath, eat, sleep and move. For this very reason, to mitigate our depleted energies and the noise that overwhelms our minds, many turn to practices such as meditation and breathwork, for in the rhythm of our breath lies the power to anchor ourselves to the present and find inner calm. 

When the body spends too much time in a stressed state, it can open the door to chronic illness and prolonged mental, and emotional imbalances. Lets us tap into the biological dial we are endowed with to take our disconnected sensory systems and balance the nourishment of inhalations and cleansing of exhalations to ultimately improve our sleep, digestion, emotional attunement, cognition, self-regulation and resilience.

Here are a few simple techniques to practice: 

• 1) Posture: standing upright or sitting at a 90* angle

• 2) Activate the diaphragm to breathe abdominally instead of through your chest; imagine your tummy as a balloon expanding and deflating

• 3) Breathing deeply and smoothly through the nose instead of the mouth (prolonged mouth breathing is detrimental to our health)

• 4) Extending the exhale a little longer than the inhale.

• 5)  The “perfect” breath is a 6 second inhale, and 8 second exhale

For a deeper dive into the history, research, and power of our breath, check out the New York Time's Bestseller book by James Nestor - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art 

_______________________________________________

Lorena Qualizza is a cherished member of the Serenità family and has worked as a Speech Language Pathologist for 37 years in the field of education and private practice, implementing proper or 'coherent’ breathing practices to support clients with voice disorders and fluency impairments. She is also passionate about helping people become more effective, dynamic, and charismatic communicators. In her past time, she dabbles in yoga, gardening, reading, flower arranging, and most recently, the ancient Japanese craft of Kitsugi.

You can reach out to Lorena at: lorena.qualizza@gmail.com