In order to quickly fall asleep and get enough sleep, it is necessary to relieve psycho-emotional stress before bedtime.
I propose to master a simple, but most importantly – a safe technique for effective relaxation and easy falling asleep, it will allow to establish sleep and control the balance of the psyche during the day.
Breathing 4-7-8 is an easy exercise, can be performed in any conditions, literally on the go. At the end of the article detailed instructions on how to perform and video, which will help to master the technique.
About the reasons for poor sleep briefly
Insomnia and other sleep disorders have become a real problem for many contemporaries.
Statistics are impartial:
- 50% of the adult population of the planet experience sleep disorders,
- insomniasuffer about 10%
- serious honey.n omosch on this issue need 20% of Russians,
- at risk – the elderly, women, teachers, lawyers, representatives of creative professions.
- in children and adolescents, sleep is more and more disturbed.
Technical progress inexorably destroys our natural biorhythms :
night lighting allows people to go without sleep even round the clock without thinking about the consequences.
We easily sacrifice sleep in favor of work, study, pleasure.
Meanwhile, lack of sleep leads to the inevitable destruction of health :
- fail in all organs and systems
- CNS depression,
- paranoia,
- diabetes mellitus
- deterioration of the brain and memory.
To maintain health and be active until old age , a person needs to:
- sleep at night and not work or have fun.
- Get enough sleep, observing your individual measure of sleep.
- Nightly receive a sufficient portion of melatonin, a natural sleep hormone.It is produced by the body only at night, in total darkness.
- Normal sleep is also debilitated by constant mental and nervous overloads.
- The flow of often unnecessary and harmful information, which makes it harder to shut off, accompanies us everywhere, and this causes irritation and nervousness.
- From the above we conclude:
- To be healthy, you need tosleep at night with good quality.
- To fall asleep without effort, you need to relax, to distract from all that worried during the day, remembering the proverb: “Morning is wiser than evening.”
Technique 4-7-8 – respiratory meditation health
- Designed byAndrew Weil is a doctor of medicine from Harvard, an expert on health issues, a supporter of breathing practices for dealing with stress, anxiety and sleep disorders.
- It is a controlled breathingconsisting of a deep breath, a long breath and a breath hold.
Based on an ancient Indian practice called pranayama , which means regulating the vital energy with the help of breath.
Andrew considers his method a “ natural tranquilizer for the nervous system, ” which helps to quickly reduce tension and calm down.
“ Give all your attention to breathing and move in the direction of relaxation ,” advises Weil .
The nature of our breathing depends on:
- physiological and mental processes,
- immunity,
- mood,
- blood pH and blood pressure.
When we are nervous, we breathe the upper third of the chest superficially and often.
Such breathing activates the sympathetic system responsible for the synthesis of stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol.
People exposed to frequent nervous shocks suffer from oxygen starvation, because shallow breathing is not able to provide the body with the right amount of O 2 .
The deep and slow breathing used in the Weil technique , on the contrary, triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for reducing anxiety and stress.
A deep breath fills the lungs with air completely, and not only their upper sections, this provides the body with an influx of oxygen, which helps to calm.
Holding the breath slows the heart’s rhythm, allows oxygen to better enter the blood.
A long exhalation removes more carbon dioxide than regular carbon dioxide. In parallel, the muscles of the body relax.
Focusing on breathing , it is easier to escape from the exciting thoughts, experiences, thinking about past and future events, adopting the installation, “we will think about it tomorrow (later), and now we will fall asleep (or calm down).”
Use the exercise every time:
- when someone upset you
- if you are tense, alarmed.Mild and moderate anxiety easily recedes.
- Toto moderate appetite .
- Whennot it turns out fall asleep .
Some practice and perseverance may be required to achieve results. However, long-term benefits are worth the effort.
After about four to six weeks you will see favorable changes :
- calm and relaxed body, then when you need it;
- claritythoughts ;
- the habit of conscious control of emotions and actions in stressful situations;
- normalization of pulse and blood pressure;
- improved digestion and overall health.
C Nimai mental strain using breathing meditation, we give your body a huge favor by stopping it in the response “fight or flight”, reducing the level of stress hormones and offsetting harmful effects.
How to manage
Study the technique should be sitting, keep your back straight, feet on the floor. In the future, you can perform sitting, lying, standing, on the go.
The tip of the tongue is placed on the tubercle of the upper palate behind the front teeth and fix it on the whole process of the exercise.
- Exhale airthrough the mouth, trying to completely free the lungs from the air.
It should make a noisy whistling sound. If it is inconvenient to exhale while maintaining the position of the tongue, we press our lips a little.
- Close your mouth and inhaleas deeply as possible the air, counting up to 4 ex.
- We hold ourbreath , count to 7.
- Exhale with noisethrough the open mouth, counting up to 8.
This is the first cycle. You need to repeat the same 3 more times to get only 4-cycle.
Important:
Breathe in peacefully, only with your nose
exhale audibly mouth.
We hold the end of the tongue constantly in the sky.
The exhalation is 2 times longer than the inhale.
The absolute time spent on each cycle does not matter, the main thing is to keep the proportion of 4-7-8.
If it is difficult to hold your breath, you can speed up the counting, while accelerating it at all stages in order to keep the ratio 4-7-8.
Over time, you will be able to slow down the count and make the breath hold with ease, and the exhalations will become longer.
During the training, do the exercise no more than 2 times during the day for two months, and also use the technique for anxiety or anxiety.
It is not recommended to exceed the norm (4 cycles) in the first 4 weeks of training. In consequence, if you wish, you can increase the exercise to eight breaths.
Summary
Breathing 4-7-8 is a surprisingly simple method, does not take much time, does not require any equipment, can be performed under any conditions.
Having mastered it, you can control your mental state, resist stress, improve health and well-being, fall asleep easily and quickly in 1 minute, according to the creator of technology.
I propose to watch a video in which Andrew Weil shows by example how to breathe and count. The video is in English, but this does not prevent understanding the information.