Breathing is an activity we do every time. Did you know that we breathe as much as 22,000 a day?

But because it is so united with us, we often do not consciously do it. In fact, sometimes we breathe the wrong way. While breathing, if done correctly, can help relieve stress-filled minds, reduce heart disease, allergies, and even lose weight!

When weight gain, oftentimes we think the problem is only on the food we eat. In fact, the possibility of what we think is also affected.

“Emotional stress can cause weight gain,” says Dean Ornish, MD, president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, United States. “Stress that accelerate the conversion of calories into fat because you are more likely to overeat or choose unhealthy foods when stressed.”

Therefore, first control your stress, then you can control your weight. The best way for that is focused on slowing the breath, which will help reduce stress hormones.

Other factors that cause weight gain can be adjusted with the respiratory heart rate variability (HRV), where the time interval between heart rate varies. By Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., author of Yoga for Pain Relief, fluctuations that occur moment by moment could help determine how you should respond to stress.

“Studies show that people with varying heart rate tends to have more self-control, while those with low heart rate variation is more likely to succumb to temptation,” he said. The temptation in question was none other than unhealthy food earlier.

Respiratory Tricks

Try to practice breathing slowly because of this increased HRV and make you more alert to your actions. You also better able to reduce levels of stress and excessive control diet, according to McGonigal.

How to do this breathing, inhale through the nose for four seconds, followed by exhale for eight seconds through pursed lips (like blowing a straw).

Another way is to apply the breathing method called Ujjayi Hindu. Inhale through the nose for six seconds, then exhale through the mouth for six seconds as though you’re trying to create a mist in the mirror. Make a sound like “huh …” pulling or lock into the stomach.

In the next breath, try to make the same sound with the mouth closed. Its voice should be like a snail’s house or the cochlea in the ear, said McGonigal.