Why Breathing Exercises Are Important

One of the most important things that you can do to have productive meetings and meetings where people are very focused is you start your meetings with a breathing exercise.

Effective communication is critical for success. Here’s the deal…When people are coming off of another zoom call from another zoom call or they’re coming into another meeting from another meeting, they’re stressed and here you are trying to have a conversation about something that’s important. We just rush into it.

One of the most important things we can do is actually slow down in order to speed up. When we remind ourselves to breathe, we are giving our nervous system time to slow down, recalibrate, and not lead with our reactive mind that’s been on overdrive. You’re letting your body get back into its state of safety, its state of well-being, and its homeostasis.

What’s important is to remember that we used to breathe a lot deeper because we were out in the fields doing work. Now, being sedentary, sitting in office chairs, people aren’t breathing as deeply as they used to be. So, you have to be conscious of this as your body breathes for yourself naturally, just like your heart pumps without you telling it what to do. Start thinking a little bit more about how deeply can you breathe, how can you increase your breathing to slow the mind and reset that nervous system as well as oxygenating your cells for peak performance.