Your mind can wander to dreary places, especially the past, like a child on the run from its parents. Overthinking snatches you away from your present, where your body remains while your mind surveys memories, mistakes made in the past, and attempts to predict the future. It often whispers doubts like a professional sceptic and arouses anger, confusion, and a lack of clarity in your mind. It uselessly adds to the daily stress, impacting long-term physical and mental well-being. Negative thoughts are a result of unchecked thinking that veils the truth in plain sight and steers you into a downward spiral of anxiety, fear, and hopelessness. Consequently, you find yourself in a rabbit hole that you unintentionally dug.

Ample of research concludes that excessive overthinking overstimulates your sympathetic nervous system and keeps your body in a ‘fight or flight’ mode for prolonged periods. As a result, your body exerts energy more than it requires, and physiological symptoms such as impaired sleep, reduced immune system, and weight fluctuations occur. In such cases, the sympathetic nervous system elevates your heart rate, tightens muscles, slows digestion, and accelerates your respiratory rate to cope with the body’s renewed energy demands.  

What Happens in Vagus, Stays in Vagus: How Might Intentional Breathwork Secretly Pull You Out Of The Rabbit Hole?

The Vagus nerve, a component of the parasympathetic nervous system, becomes a juncture that can be discreetly activated to curb overthinking traps. It is especially responsive to breath and posture, and acts as an internal reset button when your mind leaves for a dance party and gambling night in its own Las Vegas!

The parasympathetic nervous system works in contrast to the sympathetic nervous system, and primarily helps the body relax, rest, and digest — both in a literal and metaphorical sense. Intentional breathwork and mindfulness calm heart rhythms, lower blood pressure, and provide a general sense of ease. They lower levels of Cortisol – a masquerader who disguises normalcy as calamity, and increases stress levels, resulting in hyperventilation (overbreathing), and hypertension (high blood pressure).

Proper breathing balances the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your body by enhancing oxygen delivery to brain cells, thus helping it recognize that the environment is safe. As a result, the parasympathetic nervous system begins to trigger muscle relaxation in your body, and relieves physical symptoms like headaches, jaw clenching, and shoulder tightness. It sweats its brow to accelerate digestive secretions and gut motility, gradually resolving concerns of bloating, indigestion, and irritable bowel symptoms. Thus, it helps in preventing dizziness, brain fog, or anxiety caused due to hyperventilation, and achieving a state of mental clarity and comfort in no time.

Breathing Techniques That You Can Try:

1.)    THE 5-4-3-2-1 METHOD:

Simply begin by taking in a few breaths to reroute your attention and situate awareness in the present moment. Gradually increase this awareness by saying out loud the five things you see, followed by four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

2.)    HUMMING BEE EXERCISE:

Known for its soothing and comforting advantages, the Humming Bee exercise requires you to produce a humming sound similar to a bee’s buzzing while exhaling. Start by inhaling deeply through your nose to fill your lungs with fresh air. Now, exhale through your nose while making a buzzing sound from the back of your throat.  

3.)    4-7-8 METHOD:

Sit in a comfortable position with your back elongated. Position the tip of your tongue against the ridge of the tissue behind your upper front teeth for the duration of this exercise. Exhale through your mouth, making a ‘whoosh’ sound. Next, close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four, followed by breath-holding for a count of seven. Lastly, exhale completely through your mouth, making a ‘whoosh’ sound again to a count of eight to recentre your attention back in no time.

4.)    BOX BREATHING METHOD: 

Begin by exhaling to the count of four, and then hold your lungs empty for the next four counts. Now, inhale for four renewed counts, hold the breath in your lungs for four more counts, and exhale to repeat the pattern.

Much like a friend who extends a hand to pull you out of hardships, breathing grounds you in reality when things feel overwhelming. Focused breathing and similar grounding techniques bring you back to your present, making you aware of your current state. They seek to achieve emotional balance and clarity of thought. They ensure that your trains of thought are not overloaded and endless but streamlined, manageable, and well-defined!