Take a BREATH

Your guide to understanding breathwork to relieve stress

- • By Madison Bogisch

Between running around at home and running around at work, there's not a lot of time to sit still.

Everything is urgent, your cortisol is probably high and, if you're anything like us, you've tried every supplement on the market that promises to reduce stress.

However, there is one completely free method that celebrities, including Gisele Bündchen and Billie Eilish, swear by to relieve stress: breathwork.

Here, performance and wellness coach Rory Warnock shares the benefits of this celeb-loved practice and offers methods to help you take a breath.

WHAT IS IT?

According to Warnock, breathwork is breathing in a specific way to create a desired outcome. This includes breathing slowly to reduce stress or breathing quickly to increase your heart rate.

"Generally speaking, many of us are often in a state of stress due to the fast-paced world we live in, so to improve our wellbeing, we can use specific techniques to downregulate the nervous system to move more into a relaxed, calm state," Warnock notes.

While much of the research around the effectiveness of breathwork is in its infancy, a 2023 review in Brain Sciences journal found breathwork can be an effective tool for those clinically diagnosed with anxiety.