This wellness practice trend for 2018 will have you breathing easy

Move over mindfulness and meditation. A new way to control stress, anxiety and the demands of everyday life is taking over. And it’s something you can do anytime, anywhere.

This wellness practice trend for 2018 will have you breathing easy.

Life for mortgage underwriter Laurent Andrew is intense. “A stressful situation at work could trigger a panic attack in me,” Andre said.

His response: just breathe.

“I can basically do like 10 cycles of this breathing pattern and pretty much feel completely different,” he said.

He’s practicing breath work, something he takes classes to master. Rob Wilson teaches ‘The Art of Breath’ in clinics around the country. He says not only is it a way to fill our lungs in a controlled manner, but it’s the next frontier in wellness, offering a variety of potential uses and benefits.

“It can be anything from enhancing sports performance, improving your conditioning for a specific sport or for your fitness, all the way to actually helping yourself with problems like anxiety or respiratory problems,” Wilson said.

Wilson acknowledges that, yes, we all know how to breathe, however…

“Those postures and positions that we adopt slowly start to limit our capacity to fully expand our lungs and then, therefore, can limit our ability to process oxygen,” Wilson said.

Once you’ve got it down, continuing the practice costs nothing and takes very little time. Yet, proponents say it can make a world of difference. Wilson says it’s brought a breath of fresh air to tough days on the job.

“It’s a lot easier for me to be relaxed.”

Breath work is also being incorporated into meditation and yoga classes around the country and there are even apps you can download to help you do it on your own.