A 5-Minute Breathing Meditation To Cultivate Mindfulness

Did your doctor incompetently not bother telling you about this mindfulness therapy? 

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) improves long-term mental fatigue after stroke or traumatic brain injury Published online: 13 Jul 2012

 

Or did your doctor suggest using the fast breathing technique to create nitric oxide and relax your arteries? 3 breaths per second.

GuruPrem teaching BREATH OF FIRE correctly

 

One or the other, OR NEITHER WHICH MEANS YOUR DOCTOR AND STROKE HOSPITAL ARE COMPLETELY FUCKING INCOMPETENT.

Does your doctor do ONE DAMN THING for your stroke rehab?

A 5-Minute Breathing Meditation To Cultivate Mindfulness

How do you cultivate mindfulness? One way is to meditate. A basic method is to focus your attention on your own breathing—a practice simply called “mindful breathing.” After setting aside time to practice mindful breathing, you’ll find it easier to focus attention on your breath in your daily life—an important skill to help you deal with stress, anxiety, and negative emotions, cool yourself down when your temper flares, and sharpen your ability to concentrate.

Time required:

15 minutes daily for at least a week (though evidence suggests that mindfulness increases the more you practice it).

How to do it

The most basic way to do mindful breathing is simply to focus your attention on your breath, the inhale and exhale. You can do this while standing, but ideally you’ll be sitting or even lying in a comfortable position. Your eyes may be open or closed, but you may find it easier to maintain your focus if you close your eyes. It can help to set aside a designated time for this exercise, but it can also help to practice it when you’re feeling particularly stressed or anxious. Experts believe a regular practice of mindful breathing can make it easier to do it in difficult situations.
Sometimes, especially when trying to calm yourself in a stressful moment, it might help to start by taking an exaggerated breath: a deep inhale through your nostrils (3 seconds), hold your breath (2 seconds), and a long exhale through your mouth (4 seconds). Otherwise, simply observe each breath without trying to adjust it; it may help to focus on the rise and fall of your chest or the sensation through your nostrils. As you do so, you may find that your mind wanders, distracted by thoughts or bodily sensations. That’s okay. Just notice that this is happening and gently bring your attention back to your breath.

• Find a relaxed, comfortable position. You could be seated on a chair or on the floor on a cushion. Keep your back upright, but not too tight. Hands resting wherever they’re comfortable. Tongue on the roof of your mouth or wherever it’s comfortable.
• Notice and relax your body. Try to notice the shape of your body, its weight. Let yourself relax and become curious about your body seated here—the sensations it experiences, the touch, the connection with the floor or the chair. Relax any areas of tightness or tension. Just breathe.
• Tune into your breath. Feel the natural flow of breath—in, out. You don’t need to do anything to your breath. Not long, not short, just natural. Notice where you feel your breath in your body. It might be in your abdomen. It may be in your chest or throat or in your nostrils. See if you can feel the sensations of breath, one breath at a time. When one breath ends, the next breath begins.
• Be kind to your wandering mind. Now as you do this, you might notice that your mind may start to wander. You may start thinking about other things. If this happens, it is not a problem. It’s very natural. Just notice that your mind has wandered. You can say “thinking” or “wandering” in your head softly. And then gently redirect your attention right back to the breathing.
• Stay here for five to seven minutes. Notice your breath, in silence. From time to time, you’ll get lost in thought, then return to your breath.
• Check in before you check out. After a few minutes, once again notice your body, your whole body, seated here. Let yourself relax even more deeply and then offer yourself some appreciation for doing this practice today.

You may find that your mind wanders, distracted by thoughts or bodily sensations. That’s okay. Just notice that this is happening and gently bring your attention back to your breath.

Try This Simple Mindful Breath Practice

Breathe along with this GIF to calm a stressed out mind. Focus on the sensation of your breath in and out.

 This article was adapted from Greater Good In Action, a site launched by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, in collaboration with HopeLab.

How To Breathe To Boost Your Brain Power

But are these others already vetted and used by your doctor?

Science Explains Why Deep Breathing Calms You Down May 2017 

Creation of nitric oxide via Breath of Fire  February 2014 

Meta-analysis of effects of voluntary slow breathing exercises for control of heart rate and blood pressure in patients with cardiovascular diseases  April 2017 

Breathing is not just for oxygen; it’s now linked to brain function and behavior. 

December 2016

The Breathing Technique That Helps Fight Major Depression  December 2016

 

 

Oh God, more right brain/left brain crap. Nostrils don't connect to the brain, they connect to the lungs. Sounds as silly as a friend who stated that the nostril you are breathing with decides the sex of your child. Which person, the man or woman? What about conflicting breathing?

How To Breathe To Boost Your Brain Power

by Catherine Carrigan | Apr 18, 2016 | Blog | 0 comments

You can increase your brain power by taking advantage of a very specific breathing technique called alternate nostril breathing.
Just as you have a dominant hand that you use most commonly, you also have a dominant brain hemisphere.
Your right brain is generally considered your gestalt hemisphere. If you are right brain dominant, you generally learn by understanding the big picture first.
Your left brain is your logic hemisphere. If you are left brain dominant, you learn details first and proceed in a linear, logical fashion.
Under stress, most people’s non-dominant brain hemisphere is 75 to 85 percent shut down.
So if you are gestalt dominant, under stress you would have trouble thinking logically, adding and subtracting and understanding details.
If you are logic dominant, under stress you would lose the big picture, context and relevance.
The more you can access your entire brain more of the time, the more you can remain in the flow of life, accessing your full intelligence. You can think faster, feel more relaxed and see the big picture and the details at the same time.
Brain integration work is so important that the first 10 years I studied healing work, my main focus was learning everything I could about how to heal the brain naturally.
One of the simplest ways to turn on both sides of your brain is with alternate nostril breathing, also known as nadi shodan pranayama.
Here’s how you do this breathing technique:

1. Sit comfortably on a chair or yoga bolster. When you sit properly, there’s a natural curve of 30 to 35 degrees in your lumbar spine. Your spine can lengthen. Your lungs can expand. You pull your shoulders back. Your chest opens and the crown of your head extends upwards.
2. If your sinus passages are blocked, I recommend you blow your nose before you begin.
3. Bring the thumb together with the first two fingers of your left hand.
4. Fold the pointer finger and middle finger of your right hand.
5. Place your right hand in front of your nose.
6. Inhale. After you inhale, place your right thumb on the corner of your right nostril.
7. Exhale. After you exhale, place your right finger on the corner of your left nostril. Pressing into the corners of your nostrils stimulates the pituitary gland in your brain, which in turn calms your adrenal glands and balancing your thyroid gland.
8. Release your thumb off the right nostril. Exhale through your right nostril.
9. Inhale through your right nostril. Close your right nostril.
10. Release your ring finger off the left nostril. Exhale through your left nostril.
11. Continue alternate nostril breathing. Stay relaxed and don’t force the breath. When you are complete, finish by exhaling out of your right nostril.

Alternate nostril breathing is part of a longer breath work routine I put together for you for FREE called Eight Minutes to Inner Peace. 
If you are practicing alternate nostril breathing as part of this longer routine, you can practice it for as short of a time as one minute.
If you practice this breathing technique separately, I would recommend you continue for at least two minutes or until you feel significantly calmer.
How does alternate nostril breathing affect your brain?

1. Your right nostril connects to the left side of your brain.
2. Your left nostril connects to the right side of your brain.
3. When you are healthy, you will notice that your nostril dominance naturally alternates. Persistent closure of one side or the other is a sign that you are becoming ill.
4. By opening both the right and left channels, you will activate both hemispheres of your brain, allowing you to access your full intelligence.

I recommend alternate nostril breathing as a natural healing remedy for students studying for tests, for anyone who wants to calm anxiety or stop a panic attack without drugs and to experience inner peace anytime, anywhere.
Writers and artists can use this technique when they feel stuck because the creative process requires us to use both sides of our brains – the right side for inspiration and the left side for detailed execution.
What is healing?
Healing happens when you learn how to breathe and access the full power of your brain.

Science Explains Why Deep Breathing Calms You Down

But would fast breathing be better because it creates nitric oxide, dilating your arteries? Ask your doctor for definitive reasoning.

Nitric oxide which relaxes narrowed blood vessels, increasing oxygen and blood flow. 

 Science Explains Why Deep Breathing Calms You Down

• Yasmin Tayag
• Neuroscience
• March 30, 2017

We take it for granted that breathing and feelings go hand in hand: Deep breaths make us calm, and short, shallow ones signal a sense of panic. This undeniable link is what’s responsible for the success of almost every wellness intervention out there — from yoga to meditation to laughter and running — but why it’s such a powerful connection was never clear until now. By probing the neurological breathing center, scientists discovered the part of the brain that controls the intensity of breathing in the first place.

On Thursday, a team of scientists report that they’ve pinpointed a tiny ball of neurons in the brain’s “breathing center” that reaches out to the area that deals with general alertness, attention, and stress. The paper’s lead author, Kevin Yackle, Ph.D., a physiologist at University of California-San Francisco, tells Inverse that this was an unexpected discovery, despite the obvious link between breathing and yoga, meditation, and other wellness practices.

“It’s known that breathing is connected with all these things, but how — whether it was direct or indirect — wasn’t known,” he said in a phone call from Austria, where he was presenting his work at a neuroscience conference. “And so, this was surprising to us — to be able to find that there’s a specific neuron in the breathing center that’s doing this.”

Yackle was well aware of the brain’s breathing center — a knot of neurons known as the pre-Bötzinger complex (PBC) buried deep in the brainstem — but, even though that region had been discovered to be responsible for triggering breathing in 1991, nobody was sure how it controlled breathing’s rhythms. “The question that motivated all of this work was, can we identify the key cell types and molecules that generate breathing rhythm?” Yackle explains. By analyzing the genes expressed by the different types of neurons within the breathing center, he and his team pinpointed a tiny subgroup whose axons reached out to the “locus coeruleus” — the brain’s headquarters for general anxiety.

The idea, Yackle explains, is that these neurons form a bridge between the brain’s breathing center and stress center, and they’re ultimately the reason why our body’s breathing hacks — deep breaths for calmness, and short breaths for arousal — actually work.

“We think that, if you were hyperventilating, these neurons would be more active, and then they would activate this other brain center more, which would then cause more arousal. And then the opposite, if you had slow breathing, you have less activation in the center, which would lead to more calmness,” he says.

An unexpected quirk of the subset of neurons, however, reveals just how complex and sophisticated breathing really is, as National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke neuroscientist Jeffrey Smith, Ph.D., who wrote a perspective to accompany Yackle’s work in Science, pointed out to Inverse. “The interesting thing is that the PBC is the inspiratory rhythm generator, but these neurons that project to the locus coeruleus don’t appear to be an essential part of the rhythm generation itself,” he says. In other words, the only function of these neurons seems to be to reach out and touch the brain’s stress center.

Yackle’s team saw this when they eliminated those cells from the mouse brain using genetic engineering: The resulting mice kept on breathing, but their breathing was oddly, unnaturally calm. Putting that part of the breathing center on mute, it seems, in turn, prevents the brain’s stress center from getting activated — hence, slow-breathing zen mice. To both Smith and Yackle, this is an indication that breathing is so much more than just breathing; it looks like the brain, over evolutionary time, developed specialized neurons for the sole purpose of integrating breathing with higher-level functions, like experiencing stress and emotions, or talking and singing.

“Think about how breathing ultimately gets integrated with other behaviors,” Smith says. “This happens automatically — laughing, crying, this all involves control of breathing. And then, cognitively, singing, and what we’re doing right now — we’re controlling breathing and interfacing it with cognition to produce sounds, speech, and communication.”

Yackle believes his team’s findings can, in addition to underscoring the link between breathing and emotion, help shed light on how to treat issues related to irregular breathing, like panic attacks. “People will begin to hyperventilate and then they’ll go into a panic attack, and so we think that if you could perhaps silence these cells, pharmacologically, we could perhaps prevent the stress or anxiety or arousal that’s caused by breathing,” he muses, referring back to his genetically modified, calmly breathing mice.

“We didn’t do a very detailed analysis of how they were after a year, but they certainly continued to live and seemed okay,” he laughs.

Breathing your way to preventing high blood pressure

But to do this now there are these two competing ways to lower blood pressure, rather than telling you that you should have started controlling this blood pressure problem in your teens. Or is it better to get nitric oxide via beets? What does your doctor think?
Is it better to slow breath for blood pressure or fast breathing to get nitric oxide in your bloodstream?  Nitric oxide which relaxes narrowed blood vessels, increasing oxygen and blood flow.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-high-blood-pressure.html

The most common type of hypertension, which accounts for 95 per cent of people with high blood pressure, might one day be prevented with breathing exercises if caught early enough.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University have uncovered unusual activity between neurons controlling breathing and blood pressure during the development of essential hypertension.
Essential hypertension, which is high blood pressure with no known cause, affects 30% of the global population and is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease.
Lead researcher Professor Andrew Allen says the research parallels what sportspeople and eastern philosophies have long understood about the link between breathing and heart rate.
"Biathletes have to regulate their breathing to slow down their heart rate before rifle shooting, and eastern meditative practices such as yoga and pranayama have always emphasised the interaction between the two," Professor Andrew Allen says.
These neurons represent a potential target for therapies to prevent hypertension from manifesting in middle age. However Prof Allen and co-author Clement Menuet say that any intervention should be done early while the nervous system is still plastic.
In adulthood, the interaction between theses neural circuits becomes fixed and any reductions in blood pressure from breathing adjustments appear to be temporary.
The research, published in the journal Cell Metabolism uncovered altered activity between circuits of neurons that regulate breathing rates and the blood pressure in an animal model.
"By interrupting the activity between these two groups of neurons during adolescence, we were able to dramatically reduce development of high blood pressure in adulthood," says Prof Allen.
Breathing and blood pressure are functionally linked through the sympathetic nervous system, which sends nerve signals to the heart and blood vessels. The altered neural activity leads to increased fluctuations in blood pressure with every breath and are seen in both the animal model and young, healthy adults at risk of developing high blood pressure in middle age.
This emphasises the need to identify people at risk of developing high blood pressure early.
Many people with essential hypertension are otherwise healthy, active adults who eat a balanced diet and show no symptoms.
"By understanding what predictors of hypertension are easy to assess, we might be better placed to offer early treatment to pre-hypertensive patients," Prof Allen says.

Explore further: Why do we develop high blood pressure?

Journal reference: Cell Metabolism
Provided by: University of Melbourne

Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-high-blood-pressure.html#jCp

 Essential hypertension, which is high blood pressure with no known cause, affects 30% of the global population and is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease.

Lead researcher Professor Andrew Allen says the research parallels what sportspeople and eastern philosophies have long understood about the link between breathing and heart rate.

"Biathletes have to regulate their breathing to slow down their heart rate before rifle shooting, and eastern meditative practices such as yoga and pranayama have always emphasised the interaction between the two," Professor Andrew Allen says.

These neurons represent a potential target for therapies to prevent hypertension from manifesting in middle age. However Prof Allen and co-author Clement Menuet say that any intervention should be done early while the nervous system is still plastic.

In adulthood, the interaction between theses neural circuits becomes fixed and any reductions in blood pressure from breathing adjustments appear to be temporary.

The research, published in the journal Cell Metabolism uncovered altered activity between circuits of neurons that regulate breathing rates and the blood pressure in an animal model.

"By interrupting the activity between these two groups of neurons during adolescence, we were able to dramatically reduce development of high blood pressure in adulthood," says Prof Allen.

Breathing and blood pressure are functionally linked through the sympathetic nervous system, which sends nerve signals to the heart and blood vessels. The altered neural activity leads to increased fluctuations in blood pressure with every breath and are seen in both the animal model and young, healthy adults at risk of developing high blood pressure in middle age.

This emphasises the need to identify people at risk of developing high blood pressure early.

Many people with essential hypertension are otherwise healthy, active adults who eat a balanced diet and show no symptoms.

"By understanding what predictors of hypertension are easy to assess, we might be better placed to offer early treatment to pre-hypertensive patients," Prof Allen says.

Explore further: Why do we develop high blood pressure?

Journal reference: Cell Metabolism search and more info website

Provided by: University of Melbourne search and more info website

The most common type of hypertension, which accounts for 95 per cent of people with high blood pressure, might one day be prevented with breathing exercises if caught early enough.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University have uncovered unusual activity between neurons controlling breathing and blood pressure during the development of essential hypertension.
Essential hypertension, which is high blood pressure with no known cause, affects 30% of the global population and is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease.
Lead researcher Professor Andrew Allen says the research parallels what sportspeople and eastern philosophies have long understood about the link between breathing and heart rate.
"Biathletes have to regulate their breathing to slow down their heart rate before rifle shooting, and eastern meditative practices such as yoga and pranayama have always emphasised the interaction between the two," Professor Andrew Allen says.
These neurons represent a potential target for therapies to prevent hypertension from manifesting in middle age. However Prof Allen and co-author Clement Menuet say that any intervention should be done early while the nervous system is still plastic.
In adulthood, the interaction between theses neural circuits becomes fixed and any reductions in blood pressure from breathing adjustments appear to be temporary.
The research, published in the journal Cell Metabolism uncovered altered activity between circuits of neurons that regulate breathing rates and the blood pressure in an animal model.
"By interrupting the activity between these two groups of neurons during adolescence, we were able to dramatically reduce development of high blood pressure in adulthood," says Prof Allen.
Breathing and blood pressure are functionally linked through the sympathetic nervous system, which sends nerve signals to the heart and blood vessels. The altered neural activity leads to increased fluctuations in blood pressure with every breath and are seen in both the animal model and young, healthy adults at risk of developing high blood pressure in middle age.
This emphasises the need to identify people at risk of developing high blood pressure early.
Many people with essential hypertension are otherwise healthy, active adults who eat a balanced diet and show no symptoms.
"By understanding what predictors of hypertension are easy to assess, we might be better placed to offer early treatment to pre-hypertensive patients," Prof Allen says.

Explore further: Why do we develop high blood pressure?

Journal reference: Cell Metabolism
Provided by: University of Melbourne

Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-high-blood-pressure.html#jCp

Meta-analysis of effects of voluntary slow breathing exercises for control of heart rate and blood pressure in patients with cardiovascular diseases

Is it better to slow breath for blood pressure or fast breathing to get nitric oxide in your bloodstream?  Nitric oxide which relaxes narrowed blood vessels, increasing oxygen and blood flow.
I bet nitric oxide applied immediately after your stroke would help your recovery, but you will need to tell your doctor that.
Does your doctor even understand the question?

Creation of nitric oxide via Breath of Fire

Meta-analysis of effects of voluntary slow breathing exercises for control of heart rate and blood pressure in patients with cardiovascular diseases

 

The American Journal of Cardiology

sponsor

Zou Y, et al. – This study was designed to elucidate the efficacy of voluntary slow breathing exercises (VSBE) in attenuating resting heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) in patients with cardiovascular diseases. Researchers obtained evidence from RCTs demonstrating a marked reduction in resting HR, systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in patients who practiced short–term VSBE.

Methods

• Researchers searched Embase (1974 to April 2016), PubMed (1966 to April 2016), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Issue 4, April 2016) and PEDro (www.pedro.org.au) (1999 to April 2016).
• The primary outcome was the mean change in resting HR.
• Secondary outcomes included changes in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) as well as compliance with the breathing training.

Results

• This analysis included a total of 6 studies consisting of 269 subjects.
• Researchers observed that practice of the breathing exercises resulted in statistically significant HR reduction [mean difference: -1.72 beats/min, 95% confidence interval (CI): -2.70 to -0.75].
• Findings demonstrated reductions in SBP (mean difference: -6.36 mmHg, 95% CI: -10.32 to -2.39) and DBP (mean difference: -5.63 mmHg, 95% CI: -7.40 to -3.86) compared to the controls.
• Trial durations ranged from 2 weeks to 6 months.

 

Science Illuminates Why Slow Breathing Calms The Mind

Is it better to slow breath for meditation or fast breathing to get nitric oxide in your bloodstream?  Does your doctor even understand the question?

Science Illuminates Why Slow Breathing Calms The Mind

Creation of nitric oxide via Breath of Fire

 

Rhythm of Breathing Affects Memory and Fear

You are in constant danger all the time  mainly from that dangerous activity called walking. Ask your doctor to describe the breathing stroke protocol you have. Does it include this Kundalini breathing technique?

Creation of nitric oxide via Breath of Fire

http://neurosciencenews.com/memory-fear-breathing-5699/

Summary: A new study reports the rhythm of your breathing can influence neural activity that enhances memory recall and emotional judgement.
Source: Northwestern University.
Breathing is not just for oxygen; it’s now linked to brain function and behavior.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered for the first time that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgments and memory recall.
These effects on behavior depend critically on whether you inhale or exhale and whether you breathe through the nose or mouth.
In the study, individuals were able to identify a fearful face more quickly if they encountered the face when breathing in compared to breathing out. Individuals also were more likely to remember an object if they encountered it on the inhaled breath than the exhaled one. The effect disappeared if breathing was through the mouth.
“One of the major findings in this study is that there is a dramatic difference in brain activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during inhalation compared with exhalation,” said lead author Christina Zelano, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “When you breathe in, we discovered you are stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.”
The study was published Dec. 6 in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The senior author is Jay Gottfried, professor of neurology at Feinberg.
Northwestern scientists first discovered these differences in brain activity while studying seven patients with epilepsy who were scheduled for brain surgery. A week prior to surgery, a surgeon implanted electrodes into the patients’ brains in order to identify the origin of their seizures. This allowed scientists to acquire electro-physiological data directly from their brains. The recorded electrical signals showed brain activity fluctuated with breathing. The activity occurs in brain areas where emotions, memory and smells are processed.
This discovery led scientists to ask whether cognitive functions typically associated with these brain areas — in particular fear processing and memory — could also be affected by breathing.

The amygdala is strongly linked to emotional processing, in particular fear-related emotions. So scientists asked about 60 subjects to make rapid decisions on emotional expressions in the lab environment while recording their breathing. Presented with pictures of faces showing expressions of either fear or surprise, the subjects had to indicate, as quickly as they could, which emotion each face was expressing.
When faces were encountered during inhalation, subjects recognized them as fearful more quickly than when faces were encountered during exhalation. This was not true for faces expressing surprise. These effects diminished when subjects performed the same task while breathing through their mouths. Thus the effect was specific to fearful stimuli during nasal breathing only.
In an experiment aimed at assessing memory function — tied to the hippocampus — the same subjects were shown pictures of objects on a computer screen and told to remember them. Later, they were asked to recall those objects. Researchers found that recall was better if the images were encountered during inhalation.
The findings imply that rapid breathing may confer an advantage when someone is in a dangerous situation, Zelano said.

Breathing is not just for oxygen; it’s now linked to brain function and behavior.

But is Kundalini Breath of Fire better for you? Your doctor, therapist and stroke association will know nothing about this. So you will need to do the dangerous activity of breathing on your own. Good luck surviving breathing without a prescription or any idea about its' efficacy.
http://neurosciencenews.com/memory-fear-breathing-5699/

Summary: A new study reports the rhythm of your breathing can influence neural activity that enhances memory recall and emotional judgement.
Source: Northwestern University.
Breathing is not just for oxygen; it’s now linked to brain function and behavior.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered for the first time that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgments and memory recall.
These effects on behavior depend critically on whether you inhale or exhale and whether you breathe through the nose or mouth.
In the study, individuals were able to identify a fearful face more quickly if they encountered the face when breathing in compared to breathing out. Individuals also were more likely to remember an object if they encountered it on the inhaled breath than the exhaled one. The effect disappeared if breathing was through the mouth.
“One of the major findings in this study is that there is a dramatic difference in brain activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during inhalation compared with exhalation,” said lead author Christina Zelano, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “When you breathe in, we discovered you are stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.”
The study was published Dec. 6 in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The senior author is Jay Gottfried, professor of neurology at Feinberg.
Northwestern scientists first discovered these differences in brain activity while studying seven patients with epilepsy who were scheduled for brain surgery. A week prior to surgery, a surgeon implanted electrodes into the patients’ brains in order to identify the origin of their seizures. This allowed scientists to acquire electro-physiological data directly from their brains. The recorded electrical signals showed brain activity fluctuated with breathing. The activity occurs in brain areas where emotions, memory and smells are processed.
This discovery led scientists to ask whether cognitive functions typically associated with these brain areas — in particular fear processing and memory — could also be affected by breathing.

The amygdala is strongly linked to emotional processing, in particular fear-related emotions. So scientists asked about 60 subjects to make rapid decisions on emotional expressions in the lab environment while recording their breathing. Presented with pictures of faces showing expressions of either fear or surprise, the subjects had to indicate, as quickly as they could, which emotion each face was expressing. NeuroscienceNews.com image is for illustrtive purposes only.

The amygdala is strongly linked to emotional processing, in particular fear-related emotions. So scientists asked about 60 subjects to make rapid decisions on emotional expressions in the lab environment while recording their breathing. Presented with pictures of faces showing expressions of either fear or surprise, the subjects had to indicate, as quickly as they could, which emotion each face was expressing.
When faces were encountered during inhalation, subjects recognized them as fearful more quickly than when faces were encountered during exhalation. This was not true for faces expressing surprise. These effects diminished when subjects performed the same task while breathing through their mouths. Thus the effect was specific to fearful stimuli during nasal breathing only.
In an experiment aimed at assessing memory function — tied to the hippocampus — the same subjects were shown pictures of objects on a computer screen and told to remember them. Later, they were asked to recall those objects. Researchers found that recall was better if the images were encountered during inhalation.
The findings imply that rapid breathing may confer an advantage when someone is in a dangerous situation, Zelano said.
“If you are in a panic state, your breathing rhythm becomes faster,” Zelano said. “As a result you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling than when in a calm state. Thus, our body’s innate response to fear with faster breathing could have a positive impact on brain function and result in faster response times to dangerous stimuli in the environment.”
Another potential insight of the research is on the basic mechanisms of meditation or focused breathing. “When you inhale, you are in a sense synchronizing brain oscillations across the limbic network,” Zelano noted.

About this memory research article

Other Northwestern authors include Heidi Jiang, Guangyu Zhou, Nikita Arora, Dr. Stephan Schuele and Dr. Joshua Rosenow.
Funding: The study was supported by grants R00DC012803, R21DC012014 and R01DC013243 from the National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health.
Source: Marla Paul – Northwestern University
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Video Source: The video is credited to NorthwesternU.
Original Research: Abstract for “Nasal Respiration Entrains Human Limbic Oscillations and Modulates Cognitive Function” by Christina Zelano, Heidi Jiang, Guangyu Zhou, Nikita Arora, Stephan Schuele, Joshua Rosenow and Jay A. Gottfried in Journal of Neuroscience. Published online December 7 2016 doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2586-16.2016

The Breathing Technique That Helps Fight Major Depression

Why not the Kundalini Breath of Fire? That also produces nitric oxide.

The Breathing Technique That Helps Fight Major Depression

Breathing technique can reduce the stress hormones in the central nervous system.

Controlled yogic breathing helps alleviate severe depression, new research finds.

People in the study had depression that had not responded to antidepressant medication.
Dr Anup Sharma, the lead author of this study, said:

“With such a large portion of patients who do not fully respond to antidepressants, it’s important we find new avenues that work best for each person to beat their depression.
Here, we have a promising, lower-cost therapy that could potentially serve as an effective, non-drug approach for patients battling this disease.”

The study compared the effects of learning the breathing technique over two months with a control group.
The results showed that those in the yoga group had lower depression and anxiety.
The control group showed no improvement.

Yoga breathing technique

The breathing technique was practised in groups and at home.
The technique involves a series of rhythmic breathing exercises designed to put people in a calm and meditative state.
Slow and calm breaths are alternated with fast and stimulating breaths.
The video below gives you an idea of what is involved in “Sudarshan Kriya yoga”, the breathing technique used in the study.
Along with learning this breathing technique, people practised yoga postures, sitting meditation and received stress education.
Dr Sharma said:

“Sudarshan Kriya yoga gives people an active method to experience a deep meditative state that’s easy to learn and incorporate in diverse settings.”

Sudarshan Kriya yoga has already been linked to benefits in milder forms of depression.
These studies suggest that yoga reduces levels of stress hormones in the central nervous system.
Dr Sharma said:

“The next step in this research is to conduct a larger study evaluating how this intervention impacts brain structure and function in patients who have major depression.”

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Sharma et al., 2106).