The third breathing technique we're going to look at is the 478 breath or also known as the relaxing breath. I learned this breath from Dr. Andrew Weil, who is one of the leading experts in integrative medicine. The 478 breath is a wonderful breathing technique to create some calm to release some internal tension. It helps to your sleep and digestion and it can be very powerful in helping with anxiety. Like any of these breathing techniques. In the beginning, the benefits are pretty subtle, but with more repetition and practice, the benefits become much more powerful.

Now with the 478 breath. In this breathing technique, we're using both our nose as well as our mouth and we're doing it in a seated position or you can do it lying down. for illustrative purposes, we're going to do in a seated position So how this breath works is you want to take an inhale for four through your nose, hold that for a count of seven, and then you wish out for a count of eight. So you breathe in the nose for four, hold for a count of seven, and you wish out for a count of eight. Now, the whooshing sound sounds something like this. When we account in for for hold for seven washout rate, that's considered one cycle, Dr. Weil recommends doing four cycles twice a day.

So you could do it in the morning in the afternoon, or the morning in the evening. I personally like to do it in the morning before I get out of bed, and then I do it in the evening when I get into bed right before I fall asleep. After about a month or so of doing the 478 breath, mindfully doing it every day, you can actually increase the right Dr. Weil says to eight cycles, but that's the maximum. So we will do eight cycles in the morning, eight cycles in the evening. After about two to three months. His research has shown that there's a decrease in blood pressure and heart rate, improvements in sleep and digestion, and again, very powerful for anti anxiety.

Now, let's actually do the 478 breathing pattern. I'm going to do four cycles as Dr. Andrew Weil recommends, we're going to begin with just a normal breathing pattern, move into the 478 and then finish with normal breathing. So let's begin With this breathing technique, if 478 feels uncomfortable, you can change up the numbers not important to numbers more importantly doing the technique correctly.