Breathe to Change Your Mood

It really works!

Mar 03, 2024

Here comes a powerful tool that you can use, with some links to take your study a bit deeper. I’ve only begun my own research into this, and don’t claim to be an expert, but there’s something about deep truths; you know them when you hear them. There’s a knowing in our DNA and in that inner-livestream from Source we call our soul, that is never far from our awareness. This is one of those things that rang true to me, because it aligns so perfectly with the force that governs all things, the law of attaction; the non-physical physics of like attracts like.

Different ways of breathing are associated with different emotions.

Just let that roll around in your brain for a moment. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? We breathe differently when we are angry, our respirations are shorter and shallower. We breathe slowly, and deeply when we are feeling very safe and relaxed, and slightly differently when we’re in states of love and appreciation. (Philippot et al.)

So it stands to reason by the law of attraction, that if we’re feeling crappy, and we deliberately change our pattern of breathing to match feeling better, we will gradually start feeling better. Like attracts like. And it repels its opposite in the way opposing ends of a magnet repel their opposites. There’s a natural force of aversion because ike cannot attact unlike.

A wise woman told me yesterday that when you exhale for longer than you inhale, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This system is all bound up with your psoas muscles, which I’m convinced are some of the most sensitive intersections between our minds and our bodies. They are important muscles that stretch from our lumbar spine on either side, down across the groin to the bones of the “lesser pelvis” which is kind of way up near the crux of our inner thighs, as near as I can pinpoint it. And it reacts to emotions, this I know from experience. When it the psoas spasms, hell ensues. They’re closely related to our sex drive, as well.

The Study’s Results

Subjects who participated in the breathing exercise studies (below) experienced improvements in perceived stress, sleep, social connectedness, distress, anxiety, depression, conscientiousness, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and improved in terms of heart rate measures of stress reactivity.

How to do it

This is the orm of meditation I teach in many posts here on the blog.

Get comfortable. Ditch the bras. Wear loose, cozy clothing.
Sit in a comfortable position that you find relaxing and effortless.
Set a timer, so you don’t spend the whole time feeling that you should be doing something else. Grant these fifteen or twenty minutes just for yourself, and for self-care.
Find a source for a boring, repetitive sound, like a tone, or an air conditioner hum, or the wind, if it’s steady, or a fountain, or the dryer running, or a white noise app.
Turn off the ringers and alerts on all your devices.
Close your eyes, and breathe in to the count of six.
Hold for four beats.
Exhale to the count of ten.
Focus on long, slow, easy breaths.

That’s my method, but I’m learning there are many other methods and now there’s science backing up their effectiveness on our moods, minds, and well-being.

Read on!

Sky Mediation Breathing

The study (Philippot et al.) used a specific type of breathing called Sky Breathing, or Sky Meditation, which consists of several different breathing patterns which are demonstrated in the video below. I found this absolutely mind-expanding. Check it out. It’s honestly one of the best breathing meditation instructions I’ve ever experienced.

Try these exercises for a few days and let me know what you think. Try some of the breathing methods in your meditation, and also in those tense moments throughout the day. Let me know how they work for you in the comments section.

Philippot, Pierre, et al. “Respiratory Feedback in the Generation of Emotion.” Cognition & Emotion, vol. 16, no. 5, Aug. 2002, pp. 605–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/026999301430003

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