Lung Health and Breathing Easier with Justine Shelton, Certified Yoga Therapist

Who here has been stressed at least once in their life? Stressed, like had a little bit of stress in their life. I'm going to say, everyone! And when we're stressed, we tend to breathe up here, very shallow breaths. And what that does is signal to our nervous system we're in trouble. Something's going on, she's stressed out, fight or flight. And fight or flight is beneficial, we need that to run away from the saber-toothed tiger, to even play and have fun and get things done. But we also need rest and digest. And the ability of our nervous system to go from, sympathetic is the fight or flight, I call it sympathetic because it cares that you don't get eaten by the lion, so you better run. So that's the sympathetic, and then the parasympathetic is what runs under that, and that controls digestion, rest, calming of the nervous system. And if we're constantly in fight or flight, then we're having cortisol and other stress hormones released in our system, and it has just a cascading effect. And it's interesting, I was speaking to a yoga teacher yesterday that I mentor, and she said it's really been beautiful, she's just been teaching now maybe a year, and where she teaches sometimes not a lot of people come. So she goes, I've had a lot of just one-on-one sessions with people, and she worked with a woman who was in her 40s, and after class she started crying, she goes, I don't think I have ever taken a full breath in my life. You know, where you're really... Because a lot of us live, and especially if we've experienced trauma, who here has experienced trauma? I'm going to say birth is traumatic, so there we go. So it's remembering and reminding, and you can actually train your nervous system to calm down, and to get into that rest or digest. Do you want to know how? Yay! The breath is the quickest way to the nervous system. So lengthening exhale is going to help the nervous system always. But I want to show something to you just to do a little experiment. So where you are, sit up tall. If you trust me, close your eyes. And you don't have to. And then just take a moment to notice how you're feeling. If you sense your heartbeat, your breath rate, do you feel stressed or calm? Just take that little litmus test of how you're doing. And then start to equalize your breath, not pushing it to extremes. Say you take a two or three second inhale, equalize the exhale. Do that for a few rounds. And then continue with the breath. Place your left hand on your heart, or near your heart. Continue with that slow, equalized breath. And bring up the feeling of love. Love for anything. Love for love's sake. And when you're ready, you can relax your arm. And notice if that had an effect on you. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes. Did anyone sense anything? Euphoria? Good. Can you say that louder and into the microphone? I love the euphoria. Yeah, I could even sense the energy shift in the room. It just kind of went... And it's a medical... That was created by medical doctors to bring your heart into coherence. And coherence is the medical term that means your ability to switch in and out of the autonomic nervous system to switch in and out of parasympathetic and sympathetic. So that's a very easy tool. Equalize your breath. It doesn't take long, right? Just for a few, five, six breaths. Place your hand on your heart. Keep breathing. Bring up the feeling of love.