Rate of Respiration and Emotional Regulation

I found this article while doing additional research related to diaphragm breathing and have to share.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cravings/202211/how-your-breathing-patterns-affect-your-brain

I talk a lot about the physiological effects of diaphragm breathing, and something this article points out is that the effects go beyond the physical body and may effect our emotional regulatory skills.

This makes sense to me though! If our emotional regulation essentially shuts off when our nervous system is hyper-aroused and we're acting from our limbic systems instead, AND we're in a state where we are regularly living in hyper-arousal, it would make sense to me that improving respiration to positively impact the nervous system would also positively impact emotional regulation.

This is also why I'm so adamant that we can improve interoception, too. No, I'm not saying we can "fix" anything or get to a point where we sense things like an allistic brain; however, I do believe there is room for improvement if we can clear some of the paths to make things a little less difficult.

As an aside, I'm going to start talking more about using pattern recognition skills to improve interoception and help with alexithymia. It's something I've been working on trying to pull from my spiderwebby brain and put into a linear format so others can take and add it to their webs... getting there!

Until next time...

Stay regulated,

Shauna