How Breathing Can Improve your Pain

We have long used breathing exercises as a way of managing chronic or high level pain but does this actually work? and how?

Firstly yes, it does work. And this has been proven over and over again in the scientific literature. The Journal of Pain this year found a significant decrease in perceived pain with paced breathing exercises. They also found that slower pacing and longer expiration as being even more effective. How this works is still debated.

It is thought that the slower breathing may help to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest system). Think of it like this: you are running away from a large predator, your sympathetic nervous system is very active. This is the fight and flight system. It pumps more blood to the muscles and increases your sensitivity to inputs by releasing adrenaline and other hormones. This will increase your sensitivity to pain. It will also down-regulate other systems such as your immune system and digestive system.

Once you have effectively escaped the predator, you stop running. Your breathing rate slows and your parasympathetic system once again becomes more active. By performing slow breaths you may be able to "hack" your autonomic nervous system into becoming more parasympathetic, decreasing your pain levels (while also having a positive effect on stress, anxiety, digestion and immunity among other things).