From various Holy Scriptures to all sorts of pop culture art forms, all give references to what is known as the “breath of life”. But the question is what this “breath of life” is and what is its significance? The answer to this question lies in the simple activity of inhalation and exhalation that we carry out every second of our existence. It often goes unnoticed that breathing is not simply a means to keep you alive, but it is one of the strongest and the most important ways to help you lead a happy life. The key is to understand the process deeply and properly.

The practice of yoga can help you realize the deep importance of ‘conscious’ breathing in your life. It has so many positive aspects that listing them out becomes difficult. Yoga helps you actualize all these aspects in your life, and to be honest, in the modern-day world, this is what you desperately need. When you bring your mind and body together to focus on your breathing pattern, it will help you maintain a unity between your mind, body, and soul which will further facilitate a fulfilled and wholesome life. 

To help you understand better, we will discuss below 6 ways in which breathing acts as a healing tool.

• Helps you focus on your deeper self
  When you consciously breathe, you bring all your focus to how the air is coming inside and going out of your body. With this, your focus gets diverted towards your own body. It allows you to go deeper within yourself, reflect upon all the things going on in your mind and at the same time it also offers you an objective position to practically understand all the good and the bad things about you without any judgment or self-deprecation.

• Facilitates emotional strength
  When one breathes in a deep, slow and conscious manner it brings your mind in a state of complete calm, as calm as it can ever be. We have talked about how it offers an objective position to your brain to do all the practical thinking. We often tend to think that a person can either be practical or emotional and this is where we go terribly wrong. The practicality obtained by conscious breathing facilitates emotional strength. When you can look upon all your shortcomings and insecurities with complete objectivity, you allow yourself to get over your vulnerabilities making you as emotionally strong as can be.

• Induces positivity
  This is no news for anyone that breathing is one of the best and the easiest ways to induce positivity within you. It allows you to gain a degree of calm and composure. When you attain that, nothing in the world can have the power to have a negative impact on you. Rather, your positivity will be a great way to cancel out all the negatives that come your way.

• Flushes out all the stress and anxiety
  Breathing can be the best cure for all the stress and anxieties you’ve been facing in life. Deep breaths send a signal to the brain to calm down and relax. When your body is in a relaxed state, it paves way for your brain to flush out all the tension and stress that has been piling up inside your head and has been the cause of great misery. Once you get rid of all of that, you allow yourself to become a positive and calm person. You can focus on your work and life better without getting overly concerned over petty things.

• Keeps the body healthy and active
  By now you must have established that breathing can be your positivity inducing machine. It is a stress booster and a great way to understand yourself better. When it facilitates all of that, your body receives very positive energy from the brain. Many psychologists and psychiatrists have pointed out that a negative way of thinking can hamper your body severely, so much so that it can also make your cells vulnerable to cancer. When you allow yourself to be happy, content, calm and peaceful, you allow all the life process within your body to function smoothly and efficiently. It improves your blood flow, allowing a rich amount of oxygen to reach all parts of your body. This regenerates you internally, thus allowing you to have a physical as well as a mentally healthy life.

• Better connection with the environment
  Everyone has been in a situation where they are physically present at a place, but they find themselves unable to connect to the same place mentally. With the fast pacing modern world, this has become an all-time scenario with our immediate environment. It is no news that we have been consistently failing our nature and environment and one of the most basic reasons why this is happening is probably because we don’t connect enough with our surroundings, we see it but can barely feel it. This is when breathing comes in handy. Try carrying out your breathing exercises outside your house, when you do so, you will realize that your mind, body, and soul try to form a union with your natural surroundings. As you breathe in you allow yourself to breathe in all the natural essence of the outside world and establish a pure connection with your environment.

Now that you know the easiest way to a happy and content life, allow your body to heal through the simple act of breathing.