Module 1. Mindfulness: (Discussion #6) Mindful Breathing
DBTuesday is a series of posts where we explore skills and concepts from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
This is one of several posts focusing on mindfulness, which is the first module of DBT skills training. See this post for general info about DBT and this post for more info about mindfulness.
What is mindful breathing
Mindful breathing is observing your breathing.
This can sometimes be paired with breath practices like deep breathing, but breathing as a mindfulness practice doesn’t require that we breathe in any specific way. The idea is just to notice what our breathing feels like, however it might be.
Benefits of mindful breathing
There are many things about breathing that make it a nice object to use for mindfulness:
- Breathing is always there to focus on.
- We don’t have to do anything special or effortful to breathe
- We don’t have to be in any particular emotional state
- We don’t have to be in any particular place
- Most people find their breath to be a grounding, calming thing to focus on.
Research on mindful breathing in particular has found that it has many psychological and physical benefits:
- Reduces stress and burnout
- Reduces automatic negative thoughts
- Reduces anxiety symptoms
- Reduces depression symptoms
- Reduces physical pain
- Reduces heart rate and blood pressure
- Increases immune system functioning
Mindful breathing practices
Here are a few ways of doing mindful breathing.
1) Counting breaths: Count your breaths from 1 to 5 on the exhale. “One... two... three... four... five. One... two... three... four... five.”
2) Noticing sensations at nostrils: Feel the sensation of the air entering and exiting your nostrils as you breathe.
3) Noticing sensations at abdomen: Put your hand on your belly (optional) and feel the movement of your abdomen as you breathe in and out.
Reflection
Which of the mindful breathing practices mentioned above appeals to you the most?
Feel free to share any other thoughts, feelings, or reactions you may have.
Sources:
https://dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com/mindfulness/mindful-breathing/
https://positivepsychology.com/mindful-breathing/
Just to share my own experiences, I find that I personally tend to gravitate toward different types of breathing depending on how I'm feeling.
1) Box breathing (counting): inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4
I like this if I'm feeling very stressed or energetic and need something to bring me back to a normal/baseline state.
2) 4-7-8 breathing (counting): inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8
I like this if I'm feeling pretty normal and want to get into a deeply calm/relaxing state. I find that if I do box breathing for a little while, usually I start getting an urge to exhale for longer and I want to switch to something like this. (I find that in general my counting also wants to get slower or longer the more relaxed I am.)
There's some evidence that slower breathing and longer exhales can help create a relaxation response.
3) Noticing sensations at nostrils
I like this if I'm already feeling pretty calm/relaxed. Or if I'm feeling tired. Or if counting feels like a pain.
I mostly do focusing on nostrils, abdomen or every place in body which is related to breath. Sometimes I do counting too, I prefer to count both inhales and exhales. By the way, doing couple deep breaths in beginning helps me to get into practice.
As for a bit more "advanced" practices, I used to box breathing, but switched more to 4-7-8, especially when in trouble getting asleep. Or I do simply a breathing in 1 to 2 proportion (4-8, 5-10, 6-12 etc). I also tend to do alternate nostril breathing and find that appealing for myself.
@windSpirit
Those all sound great, and makes sense that doing the deep breaths at the beginning would help with initially relaxing things and getting into the right mental/physical space for noticing breath.
I've done breathing in 1-2 proportion and found it really calming. I should probably give alternate nostril breathing a try.