Teaching patients directly about mind-body therapies shows patients that you value these practices.
You get the added benefit of engaging in relaxation and decompressing from the stress of your daily work when you directly teach your patients.
In addition to the relaxation response technique that you learned in the previous section, you can also help your patient move into a relaxed state with some deep breathing techniques. Breathing techniques can be used as a practice by itself or else as a way to begin practicing any other mind-body technique.
Deep Breathing Exercise
Unlike other bodily functions, the breath is the only bodily function that we do both voluntarily and involuntarily. We can consciously use breathing to influence the involuntary (sympathetic nervous system) that regulates blood pressure, heart rate, circulation, digestion and many other bodily functions.
Many of us breathe from our chest rather than our abdomen, which results in less oxygen transfer to the blood and subsequent poor delivery of nutrients to the tissues. Find out if you are a chest breather.
When we breathe slowly, our diaphragm contracts, forcing air downward causing the abdomen to expand, pulling air into the lung’s air pockets and improving the flow of blood and lymph. With regular practice you can train the body to improve its breathing technique and learn to breathe from the abdomen most of the time, even while asleep.
Use these breathing instructions to learn or teach your patients to breathe from the abdomen:
Breathing Instructions
To breathe from the abdomen:
Place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. When you take a deep breath in, the hand on the abdomen should rise higher than the one on the chest. This insures that the diaphragm is pulling air into the bases of the lungs.
After exhaling through the mouth, take a slow deep breath in through your nose imagining that you are sucking in all the air in the room and hold it for a count of seven (or as long as you are able, not exceeding seven).
Slowly exhale through your mouth for a count of eight. As all the air is released with relaxation, gently contract your abdominal muscles to completely evacuate the remaining air from the lungs. It is important to remember that we deepen respirations not by inhaling more air but through completely exhaling it.
Repeat the cycle four more times for a total of five deep breaths. Try to breathe at a rate of one breath every ten seconds (or six breaths per minute). At this rate our heart rate variability increases which has a positive effect on cardiac health.
The use of the hands on the chest and abdomen are only needed to help you train your breathing. Once you feel comfortable with your ability to breathe into the abdomen, they are no longer needed.