BREATHE AND FOCUS: The Power of Breathing to Enhance Your Concentration

It has been proven that breathing consciously is directly related to emotional regulation but also can assist us in our attentional control and concentration in key moments of our lives such as studying, taking an exam, having an important conversation, driving a vehicle, and even training our breath. Here is where one of the greatest questions arises: Do we improve our concentration by breathing better, or do we concentrate to improve our breathing?

In 2019, Feinstein conducted several studies on mindfulness meditation, reaching well-known conclusions that demonstrate meditation can modify the structure and functioning of critical areas of the brain, alleviate anxiety, and enhance processes of concentration and compassion. Although meditation can have surprising effects, such as inhibiting cortisol in the blood, feeling mental peace for several hours, and psychological security, most people do not fully benefit from these experiences because they end up abandoning the practice halfway through. This is very common among those who hold full-time jobs, parenting responsibilities, household chores, among others. According to Feinstein, "mindfulness meditation, as commonly practiced, is no longer suitable for the world we live in." However, if we focus solely on the practice of breathing, knowing that we all do it repeatedly throughout the day, the task becomes simpler and within reach of anyone to achieve.

Breathing-Brain Relationship

For researchers, understanding the connection between breathing, brain activation, and advanced brain activity is essential. So far, they have identified a small group of neurons in the brains of mice that send information about respiratory activity to other neurons in the central nervous system, located in areas related to critical thinking, decision-making, and attention. In particular, these neurons communicate with a group of noradrenergic neurons that influence the activation/deactivation state of the body. This discovery offers a new perspective on how the act of breathing can have a functional impact on areas of the brain responsible for reasoning, information processing speed, decision-making, and reflection or insights.

Another article published in the same journal by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine highlights the benefits of focused breathing. In this study, scientists found a direct link between breathing and brain activity. "This link means that if we can slow down our breathing, either through deep or slow, controlled breaths, these neurons do not activate the neuronal excitatory center, preventing the brain from becoming overactive. Thus, you can calm your breathing and also your mind," explains one of the study's lead authors, Mark A. Krasnow. In other words, our breathing could act as a great conductor, directing the rhythm and tone changes of our mind, causing the band to speed up or slow down its pace and even focusing attention on a specific sound or instrument over the rest.

Conscious Breathing. Benefits

We breathe about twenty thousand times a day, but often do it unconsciously. As a society, we only use 30% of our respiratory capacity. It's not that we breathe poorly for no reason, but rather that we have little awareness of our breathing and do it as we can, just to survive. However, we could breathe more deeply and consciously to live better.

There are many concentration and relaxation techniques, where learning to breathe correctly is the first step. According to McArdle and others (2004), standard and automatic breathing is controlled reflexively by the brain. Humans can consciously intervene at certain times to achieve more suitable, healthier, and more beneficial breathing, which produces a cascade of benefits to the body simply by paying attention to breathing.

Informal Practice

Before working on proper breathing, each person must become aware of their own natural mechanism and respiratory process by taking a few minutes each day with the idea that the practice will be solely for that purpose, making the reflex conscious. Here are some practices that could help train "Conscious Breathing":

1- Become aware of your breathing:

Leave your emotions and thoughts for a moment and focus your attention on the natural movement of your breathing. Notice how the air enters through your nostrils and how your lungs and abdomen inflate. Try to pay attention for 3 or 5 minutes. If you notice that concentrating on your breathing increases your anxiety or discomfort, try focusing your attention on your feet or hands. Remember that discomfort is not inherently dangerous, but at the beginning of training, we can redirect our attention where it works best for us.

2- Rhythmic breathing

Breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. At the end of the exhalation, pause and wait patiently until the body starts the next inhalation.

Each breath through the nose is slow and calm.

When you reach the peak of inhalation, slowly release the air through the open mouth. Then, without closing your mouth and with your jaw relaxed, pause and wait consciously until the body needs to breathe again.

After two or three breaths, allow the time between one breath and another to be a moment of total relaxation for your body.

Then, breathe for a specific area of your body that needs to relax. Breathe with this rhythm several times.

3- Breathing on the hand

Extend the palm of your hand as if it were a star. Trace the outline of your hand with the index finger of the other hand. Inhale, trace from the tip of your wrist to the tip of your thumb. Exhale, trace the other side of your thumb.

Repeat once upwards while inhaling, downwards while exhaling. Then repeat with the other hand.

Conscious breathing is a training, we must be aware of how the musculature involved is organized and work it. Full breathing – which seeks to use 80-85% of respiratory capacity – is not a natural breathing, but at a given moment, it can help us deactivate our stress axis and the cortico-limbic activation levels of our nervous system. Thus, absorbing more oxygen levels to see things from another perspective. The vascular and cardiorespiratory system is highly regulated by the nervous system. Knowing the link between the nervous system and the cardiorespiratory system, through breathing, one can influence the functioning of the nervous system.

In summary

Respiratory rhythms are a principal organizer of the oscillations that occur in the cortex of the human brain and have a considerable impact on how we attend to stimuli from our environment, interpreting them as more or less threatening to ourselves. What is interesting is that such stimuli will be considered more or less threatening and we can detach ourselves more from certain dangerous focus of attention by taking new perspectives depending on how much time we dedicate to consciously train our breathing and be directors of our own orchestra, which is life.


References

· Johnson, G., y Kuyken, W. (2020, julio 8). How to find your mindfulness. Psyche. https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-find-the-mindfulness-practice-that-works-for-you

· Nestor, J. (2020). Breath The New Science of a Lost Art. Riverhead Books. New York