Breathing Exercises for Rest, Digest, & Recovery
During a tough run, ride, match, class, or workout, your body is physically stressed, and a rest day is imperative for your body to recover, strengthen, and prepare for another training day.
Injuries, burnouts, and fitness plateaus often occur when we forget to account for any other stresses in our training.
Life can be...stressful. I felt the need for the ellipses being that it is January 7, 2021, which means January 6, 2021 was yesterday.
There’s more uncertainty in the air than ever, and many of us are feeling the heaviness of the world. When we feel this stress, it affects our body’s ability to recover and it needs to be accounted for in your training.
Sometimes, a workout might be exactly what you need to cope with mental stresses; but, often times (and often overlooked), our mental stresses become so heavy that they begin wearing down our bodies.
In those times, it’s imperative to our health (AND fitness) that we listen to our bodies’ and our individual needs.
Give yourself that extra rest day when it’s needed, and encourage recovery by exercises intended to activate our parasympathetic nervous system (think: rest, recover, & digest vs. the sympathetic nervous & fight, flight, fawn or freeze).
For times of stress, recovery days, or the end of a training session, try one (or all) of the following parasympathetic breathing exercises to down-regulate your sympathetic nervous system:
Alternate Nostril Breathing:
Use your finger to plug your right nostril. Inhale slowly and deeply through the left nostril.
At the peak of your breath, switch to plug your left nostril. Exhale out of your right nostril.
At the end of a slow exhale, inhale through your right nostril, and repeat the flow.
Square Breath
Inhale 4 seconds
Pause 4 seconds
Exhale 4 seconds
Pause 4 seconds
Repeat
Prolonged Exhale
Inhale 4 seconds
Exhale 8 seconds
Repeat
Reach out for help navigating your fitness through times of stress, or times of ease.