We’re not very effective at breathing normally. It’s a very complex process and involves not just your mouth, nose and lungs, but also your intercostal muscles and diaphragm. If we were to focus on those parts of the body and breathe into them, we would really enhance the quality of our breath.
But we don’t do that. We’re shallow breathing, or breathing really fast, quite a lot of the time, particularly when we’re experiencing high levels of anxiety when the body goes into fight-or-flight mode. Therefore we’re not having an effective transfer of oxygen.
If we’re not getting an effective transfer of oxygen into the rest of the body, then that can do things to our heartbeat and our blood pressure, and has the ability to cause harm over a long period of time. So with breathing exercises, what we’re asking people to do is become a bit more aware of what their breath is doing, particularly when they are perhaps feeling a bit lightheaded.