Role of mindful breathing in prevention of mental illnesses

Its 3:00am at the night when it’s dark and lonely, I am unable to sleep and there starts my endless cycle of unnecessary thoughts and mindless negative feelings related my past experience, loss, fear of failure and future what follows right after that are several episodes of breathlessness, palpitations and nervousness.

At daytime these episodes are mostly masked with pretentiousness, work and chores.

I finally decided to find out about the root cause of the problem, I took help and my psychiatrist advised me to attain clarity in life; as there is no sense of purpose and only confusion and stress that’s why I am getting such physical symptoms as an outpour of overly filled jug.

I sat with myself to realize that I have clarity to ask for help, I have enough clarity decide to consult a psychiatrist: I have clarity to exercise, eat what is right for me and to read and write yet I don’t have clarity in my life?

Strange

The easiest way to identify what is your life purpose is not to just rely on your thought process or how do you feel about yourself in different situations in life however it is by spending time with yourself, paying attention to your breathing process realizing which thought or activity makes you feel most calm and ecstatic.

To me it’s an old age phenomenon to confine your goals in life to just materialistic gains as what will you do of all of that if you are feeling miserable and suffocated within yourself.

According to me the best way to start reaching for clarity is to start analyzing consciously the way you are breathing.

Meditation and yoga actually is the only preventive remedy to cater physical manifestations (as previously mentioned) of many type of mental illnesses. And

Yoga is actually learning to consciously breathe.

How can deep or conscious breathing help anyone who is in stress, during panic attacks or during low mood or crying or anger spells?

·       Conscious breathing firstly reduces the heart rate and lowers blood pressure.

(Notice how you are breathing when you are angry/ depressed or ecstatic/excited.When you start practicing deep breathing exercises you gain awareness of your breathing pattern and that is how you get control and can learn to gradually change your mood by changing the way you breathe.

·       Mindful breathing releases stress

·       Prayanama enhances concentration

·       It creates awareness of the current body state

·       Square breathing technique is the visualization breathing exercise which aids in better focus and imagination(sit comfortably in an upright posture imagine a square placed in front of you, inhale by visualizing one side of the square  and exhale by imagining the other corner of square continue till you have covered the entire square and keep repeating until you can). 

·       4-7-8 method developed by Dr Andrew Weil cures insomnia. (Inhale for 4 seconds, pause for 7 seconds and exhale for 8 seconds, repeat until you realize it’s time to rise and shine!)

·       Belly breathing ameliorates digestion

·       It increases blood circulation

·       It boosts energy and improves immunity

Our mind body and soul are interconnected which means there is a very strong relation between how we think, what we feel and what physical actions do we take in our lives.

If one state is not functioning properly the rest of the other part of the chain will get affected, what binds all three of these states is our consciousness and to acquire control over our conscious mind our subconscious mind needs to be aware and at peace which can only be attain by mindful breathing.