Today I’m joined by Reis Paluso, a breathwork expert, to talk about how to reduce stress through breathing. I attended one of Reis’ Wim Hof workshops a few years back, and what I learned has been instrumental in my approach to the daily stresses of life.
The No. 1 question Reis gets asked by people who attend his workshops is how to deal with stress. To answer that question, there are a couple of things to know about how our nervous system influences our breath. Our nervous system has a sympathetic (i.e., flight-or-fight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous system, and each system utilizes different breathing techniques.
“If you want to be more relaxed, you need to “lean” into your stress by charging your breath.”
The sympathetic breath is a faster breath that travels through the mouth and into the chest and focuses more on the inhale. The parasympathetic breath is a slower breath that travels through the nose and into the belly and focuses more on the exhale. Often, people try to go from one state to the next and have a hard time doing it. In Reis’ words, if you want to be more relaxed, you need to “lean” into your stress by charging your breath.
Starting at 3:01 in the video above, you can see a demonstration of how to do this. The two of us perform 10 super-ventilated, accelerated breathes, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. To start, our inhales and exhales each last four seconds, and after each repetition, we lengthen our exhale by two seconds. After each exhale, we also hold our breath for a short time to allow our nervous system to calm itself. By the time we reach 12-, 14-, and 16-second exhales, we’re in a more centered, balanced, and relaxed state.
When trying this exercise yourself, feel free to adjust the parameters of it. If you want to know about any of Reis’ upcoming workshops, you can visit the website https://www.ourbreathcollective.com/.
If you have any questions, whether it’s regarding this topic or the latest happenings in the real estate world, feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email. I’d be happy to help you.
