"If you can master your breathing, you will become master of your emotions." (Osho)

The emotional seismograph

Breath is life and we all breathe, yet we are increasingly less aware of the importance that breath has in our lives.

I like to think of breathing as a seismograph of our emotions. Breathing, dependent on the autonomic nervous system, reacts to any change in our mood, just like a seismograph.

In psychotherapy I have noticed how little importance people give to breathing and how little they are aware of it.

Many times, after listening to a patient, I ask him:

“Are you aware of how you are breathing?”

and, almost always, the answer I get is “no, I don’t know.”

Often this response is accompanied by a reaction of surprise as if the person wanted to tell me

“Why this question, what does it have to do with it?”

I tell this anecdote to underline the importance of respiratory function both for recognizing emotions and for the ability to express them appropriately.

Quindi la mia domanda inerente alla respirazione, seppur può apparire strana, ha in realtà un grande valore terapeutico, poiché porre l’attenzione al respiro significa riportare l’attenzione a sè stessi e a come si sta nel mondo.

Riconoscere il proprio modo di respirare ci fornisce molte più informazioni di quelle che si possa immaginare e diventa fondamentale quando si ha a che fare con problematiche legate all’ansia e alla paura.

The consequences of anxiety and fear are reflected in the volume of air inspired, which is increasingly scarce, or in the breathing of chest (flat), in which only the upper and middle parts of the lungs are supplied with air, or in breathing clavicular (of fear), in which insufficient and superficial air sampling is carried out.

In fact, a typical expression of who suffers from anxiety è “Help, I can't breathe, I'm short of breath”Helping a person to observe their breathing means helping them to know themselves and to regain possession of a vital element that they have at their disposal, always and in any case.

Wherever we go, whatever we are doing or saying, whatever emotion we are feeling, the breath is always available to help us reconnect our experience to the present moment.

This is why I believe it is so important to focus on breathing in therapy, as it has a lot to say about a person and through it it is possible to recover an element of vitality and well-being that, once we become aware of it, is impossible to do without.

Imparare a leggere i segnali del corpo è parte del lavoro terapeutico: percorso per l’ansia a Firenze.