Feelings of disconnectedness from our body and the environment.Difficulty concentrating and making good decisions.Nausea and ‘butterflies’ in the stomach.Overbreathing can cause various symptoms that can leave us feeling more stressed, including (Khazan, 2019): If we are not being active (perhaps standing, waiting anxiously for an interview), we take in more air than we need and exhale more carbon dioxide than we produce (Khazan, 2019). In anticipation of urgent action and a need for extra oxygen, we start taking in more air. When we feel anxious, our body is getting ready to run away or stand up and fight. Such breathing patterns can also result from “habitual ways of responding to situations,” including stress (Khazan, 2019, p. ![]() We typically overbreathe when rushing up the stairs to answer a call, running to catch a bus, or getting startled by a loud noise. So, what happens to our breathing when we get stressed? Switching to deliberate, slow breathing flips our vagal response, and our parasympathetic system kicks in, allowing us to relax and recover, releasing powerful feel-good endorphins (Howgego, 2020 Nestor, 2020). ![]() ![]() We ready ourselves to engage in our fight-or-flight response (Howgego, 2020 Nestor, 2020). Breathe heavy and fast, and we kick in our sympathetic nervous system. While treatments for patients with health problems, such as rapid heart rate, diabetes, and erectile dysfunction, often focus on individual organs, research suggests they may, in fact, be experiencing communication problems along the autonomic and vagal network (Nestor, 2020).ĭespite breathing being an autonomic function, we can consciously take control, choosing how and when we breathe. Stress and breathing are intimately connected changing one influences the other.Ĭrucially, they both have a relationship with the autonomic nervous system and, of particular importance, the vagus nerve – “a meandering network within the system that connects to all the major internal organs” (Nestor, 2020, p.
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