THIS EXERCISE CAN HELP LOWER YOUR RESTING HEART RATE
Resting heart rates can tell us a lot about our current state of health. Most commonly, we see resting heart rates ranging from 60 to 100 beats per minute. The lower our resting heart rate is, the healthier our body will be.
We live in a tech savvy time and age where we have every bit of information readily available to us at any minute, yet we spend this technology looking at chonky cats. (I mean, who doesn’t though?)
There is an app we all have available in our smartphones that can tell us our current resting heart rate. When it comes to tracking your resting heart rate, measure your heart rate first thing in the morning. I would suggest doing this for
a few days to determine where your average resting heart rate is.
Now, let’s move onto the exercise that will help you lower your resting heart rate and improve your health.
Breathing.
STOP READING AND DO THIS RIGHT NOW!
Place your hand on your chest and stomach, take 3 breaths, and think about what you are feeling.
Is the hand on your chest moving more than the hand on your stomach? If so, then this exercise will be great for you.
*Nerd Talk We have two states of breathing; parasympathetic and sympathetic.
When we think of parasympathetic breathing, think passive. You are relaxed and calm. There are no bears in the room trying to eat us.
When we think of sympathetic breathing, think stress. You are in a room that is on fire and a bear is going to eat you.
Now, go back to the breathing exercise we did earlier. If your chest was raising up, we need to ask ourselves, “Is the place on fire with a bear eating my face?” If not, let’s focus on breathing in a more passive state of mind.
How to Baseline Breathing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSPsSaJEKqU (ADD ACTUAL VIDEO: BASELINE BREATHING)
When we can teach our body how to breathe in a more passive state, our resting heart rate can be lowered. This is because we are not sending signals to our brains that we are stressed out and being attacked by a bear.
There are plenty of other factors that can help you with lowering your resting heart rate, but this is one of them. This is only the beginning of what breathing can do for you. There are many benefits that breathing alone can fix.
Stay tuned for more to come on these topics in the future.