The Autonomic Nervous System & The Fight/Flight/Freeze Response

To understand why breathwork is effective, you have to understand a couple things about the nervous system.

There are the parts of our brains that control thinking and movement and then there is the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system manages all the things we don’t think through, like our hearts beating, digestion, kidney and liver function, the stress response, including the release of stress chemicals…and breathing.

Activating the Fight/Flight/Freeze Response

The stress response and breath have an interesting relationship. When we encounter a stressful situation a number of things happen automatically. Pupils dilate, the heart beats faster. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released. Digestions slows. Breathing becomes shallow. Often through the mouth and into the chest. 

Exposure to stress quickly triggers to the body that it needs to act. The body creates the energy needed to run. To fight. To protect ourselves. The response in the body is the same if the attacker is a bear or your boss.

In the wild, you would have run away from the threat and it would have stopped and the body would have returned to normal…but the boss…they don’t go away. 

The stress stays…and stays…growing daily. The body never comes out of fight or flight. The body stays flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. Our bodies are not meant to stay in this constant state of physical and mental stress. Staying in the elevated stress response is hard on the body. It affects digestion, heart rate, blood pressure and the hormones and chemicals your body creates.

Improper breathing can trigger a state of fight or flight. No bear or boss required.

Hacking the stress response with your breath

Breathing is special. It’s the only part of the autonomic nervous system that we can affect directly with our thinking brains. We can choose to hold our breath. We can choose to take a deep breath. 

The breath is like a back door to the stress response.

The automatic stress response affects breathing and breathing affects your stress response. When you change how you are breathe, you change change the internal state of your body.

Releasing the body from the fight or flight response

Proper breathing patterns reduced blood pressure and heart rate—as well as decreased anxiety and stress. Scientifically explainable miracles occur when you are able to breathe deeply and slowly.

Give it a try.

Breathe like you are running. In the mouth, into the chest. Quick and shallow for 60 seconds. Scan your body. How do you feel? Check your pulse. What do you notice?

Next take a deep breath in through the nose and into the belly. Let the breath roll up into the chest and exhale with a sigh as you exhale. Repeat. In-two-three-four…Out-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Repeat for 60 seconds.

Scan your body and check your pulse. It works.

This is only the beginning.

If 60 seconds of intentional breathing can make you feel like this, imagine what a breathwork journey can do for you.