Take a deep breath — your body and mind will thank you

ST. LOUIS — Breathing is a lot more than out goes the bad air, in comes the good. It's about using the breath for everything it can do, including good health and stress relief.

Breathing often gets lost in the list of good health practices because it's so automatic. But keeping an eye on your breathing can be a key to feeling and living better, experts say.

The National Institutes of Health describes breathing in two movements: inhaling and exhaling.

Inhaling sucks air from the environment so the lungs can take in oxygen and, unfortunately, some bad gases, too.

Exhaling expels unused air and used oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide.

Breathing is consistently the most intimate activity living beings have with the environment. If a person inhales about 20 times per minute at rest, that translates to about 28,800 times a day. If the average breath is a half-quart of air, that's a lot of interaction.

Most people breathe wrong, says Ryan Niemiec, a psychologist with St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute.

Most people breathe "anxiously through their chest — shallow breathing — especially in response to stress or pressure," says Niemiec. Very shallow breathing — hyperventilation — causes a variety of sensations, including muscle tension, lightheadedness, headache and anxiety.

Healthy breathing

Experts note that breathing is the one system that is both automatic and can be controlled. That control may have a purpose, they say.

When you're practicing yoga or suffering an anxiety attack, you're going to be told one way or another to breathe deeply. Why? It's healthy.

In yoga, for instance, breathing is often more important than stretching and balance, says Dayna Macy, with Yogajournal.com, a Web site for the yoga community. "When you calm down the breath, you can calm down the mind."

Christine Yonkers, of YogaSource in Richmond Heights, Mo., agrees. "Yoga is the bridge between body and mind. When you lengthen your breath and your breath is relaxed, your body will relax.

"You relax by focusing on it. Yoga is about bringing people into the present moment in their bodies. The breath is always in the present moment, and it's happening right now."

Tamara Burlis is a physical therapist and instructor at St. Louis' Washington University. "People use low, deep breathing for relaxation purposes," she said. "They focus on their breathing, and start to slow down their breathing, to get more in tune with themselves."

Physical benefits of healthy breathing include reduced blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension as well as increased energy, says Niemiec.

Psychological benefits include more mental calmness and less anxiety, he says.

The more fit you are, the better a breather you are. The breathing muscle, the diaphragm, gets stronger with work, like any other muscle. And the more fit a person is, the more efficient the lungs are at using oxygen.

"Your body is more efficient, so you can do an activity taking less breaths," Burlis says. "Your body is more efficient at using air."

The perks of posture

Posture is one of the overlooked areas when it comes to breathing. The volume of air the lungs can take in changes with posture. Crunching forward can limit the amount of work the lungs can do, says Burlis. Sitting up straight with your shoulders back and chest out can better open the body to deeper breathing.

Someone who is obese or is in the last trimester of pregnancy needs to pay particular attention to posture. "They're going to be short of breath, because it's going to be harder for their diaphragm to push against their abdominal areas because of fat, or baby is pushing back," Burlis says.

Lynn Rossy is a clinical psychologist and director of the Mindfulness Practice Center at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Breathing is the first line of defense with the cases of anxiety she faces at the school.

"Mind and body are integrally connected," she says. "If you can start with the body, it's the easiest place to effect change. You can divert your attention from obsessive thoughts.

"It's about taking your attention to the present. The breath is used for concentration and meditation. It actually has a physical effect on the body."

Rossy said shallow breathing is often the body's reaction to fight or flight, even when there's no battle or fleeing required. That's reflexive, but counteracting it can be conscious, she says.

When she finds someone suffering anxiety, her first step is to get them to breathe properly in order to calm down.

"Lie on the floor flat and put one hand on their upper stomach," Rossy says. "Then think about being able to expand the belly on the inhale and contract on the way out.

"Have a good exhale. If you don't exhale out, you don't get a good breath in."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent Amy Bertrand contributed to this report