Manage Menopause Naturally

I have found that since I became perimenopausal and later entered into menopause, I’ve relied more and more on deep, diaphragmatic breathing in all sorts of situations. Little things irritate me more than they used to, I need to control more than I ever thought possible, which it isn’t of course and I seem to get overwhelmed easily.

I first learned about diaphragmatic breathing when I studied chiropractic and it is something we use with all our patients in the practice on a daily basis. As they lay down on the adjusting table and wait to receive their adjustment, they have all learned to do deep breathing to get them into the right headspace and relax their body, to allow for a deeper experience.

So what is diaphragmatic breathing?

Diaphragmatic breathing engages your diaphragm. This is an important muscle that helps you breath. As you breathe in the diaphragm contracts and flattens, allowing the chest cavity to enlarge, pulling air into the lungs as in a vacuum. When you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and forces air out of the lungs. The deeper you breathe, the more air is exchanged.

As you concentrate on taking deep breaths, you will start to feel more relaxed as you start to activate the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

The ANS, as its name suggests, takes care of those activities that are automatic, such as breathing, body temperature, blood pressure, digesting food and other metabolic processes such as hormonal function. The ANS can be divided into two systems: the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. Each one is responsible for different bodily functions, however in general terms, the sympathetic system is responsible for getting things going, and the parasympathetic system slows things down. When we are in fight and flight, the sympathetic system is going all out, and the idea is to get you back into rest and digest, ie the parasympathetic system. You can control your sympathetic system by doing deep breathing, ie diaphragmatic breathing.

The added bonus with this is that it will affect the other systems that the ANS controls, see above. I find that if I wake up in the middle of the night going through my never ending list of things to do and get panicked by it, then this type of breathing really helps me calm down and get back to sleep. A couple of years ago I started waking up with panic attacks and diaphragmatic breathing, laying on my back with my hands folded on my belly, just below the navel on the REN 4 point in TCM really helped relax me. Sometimes it took quite a few breaths, but usually around 10 and I was back in control. REN 4 is called Guanyuan in Chinese is a special point in TCM. It’s translation is Gate of Origin. It strengthens, nourishes the kidney qi and kidney yin and yang, it nourishes the essence, benefits qi in general, calms the mind and aids menstrual cycle and the uterus. So by doing deep breathing and placing your hands over this mid point, you are not only calming your sympathetic ANS bringing it back to rest and digest, you are also strengthening and tonifying your qi and blood xue and balancing yin and yang for the female hormones. It’s a win win moment for you!

Anywhere you like

The beauty of this exercise is that you can literally do it wherever you like! If you’re in the queue at the checkout counter and start to feel stressed, do some deep breathing while you stand there. You can practice in the car sitting down, at a party, at the dining table, in a restaurant. It really is so simple and if you don’t make too much noise with your breaths in and out, then no-one is even going to know what you’re doing, which produces a little smile and sometimes a laugh in me as I find that quite funny!

How many deep breaths should you do at a time

I think that to start with 10 deep breaths are plenty. Most of us shallow breath for most of the time because we are increasingly in fight and flight, so our body isn’t used to too much oxygen. When you start deep breathing you are increasing this amount of oxygen and you might feel a little dizzy. If you start to feel dizzy then gently tone it down to breathing normally (for you). Practice a couple of times a day until you can do 10 deep breaths without feeling dizzy. From there you can always increase. Wouldn’t it be lovely if this was the new way of breathing for you, continuously in rest and digest, it’s something we could all aim for.

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