Is Deep Breathing Good for the Heart?

April 19, 2021
Elijah Nisenboim

is deep breathing good for the heart? The short answer is, yes.

A healthy heart could be the most important facet to good health. Your heart is like the engine in your car, one should only rev the engine on occasion. Too much stress and work on the heart will shorten your life. But how can you calm your heart rate down without taking medication. In fact, there is no direct way to change your heart rate. In order to change the way your heart beats you must go through your breathing.

Deep breathing is good for the heart because you require breath to live, therefore breath is life. There is nothing more powerful for the health of your heart than deep breathing. Breathing brings life force energy directly into your heart.

Deep Breathing is a Conscious Act for Heart Health

Interestingly, of all the internal organs it is only the lungs that offers you the opportunity to direct the organs function. As an animal, your breathing happens all by itself but you can voluntarily take a breath. It is a reflection of the uniqueness of the human’s ability to live as an animal to choose the direction and destiny of our life.Regulating your breathing will automatically affect the way your heart beats. Notice that when you are anxious or have adrenaline, your heart rate will speed up. If you do focused slow breathing, after a few minutes your heart rate will slow down.

The power of the breath is the most powerful yet underused tool in our quest to de-stress, calm and be at peace. The reason is simple. Breath is life. Without your breath there is no life. When you were born you took a breath in and in the moment that you leave this world you will breathe out your last breath, so there is nothing you need more every moment than your ability to breathe. And yet,because it can be an automatic unconscious mechanism, we almost never think about it even though we breathe short and shallowly when we are angry and perhaps breathe very little when we are up in our minds and under stress. You can go without food and water for quite awhile but ten minutes without the breath and you cannot live.

The Power of Breathwork to Bring Health to the Heart

We miss a great opportunity found in conscious breathing, also known as breathwork, to regulate our nervous system, calm us down and give us energy. Breath gives life so it gives energy. The ancients called it chi, qi and prana. Breathing without thought certainly gives us life but there is much more energy available than simply living like an animal for survival. It is the energy to trust and follow our passions and life purpose. Simply put, breathwork can help you access that energy and can help you access the vast stores of chi available inside each and every breath you take.

The Power of Effiji Breathing for the Heart

Effiji Breathwork, the technique I have been doing for 30 years is a rigorous, powerful mouth breathing done in the chest with a facilitator that unlocks the chi inside the breath. Within minutes of practicing Effiji Breath you will feel it. You don’t need to have any previous training to feel it and get its benefit. You simply just do the practice and allow the facilitator to guide you.

One of the most interesting and informative things that happened to me early in my journey as a teacher happened around 1992. I began working with a woman just prior to her having triple bypass surgery. She went into her surgery with a positive attitude and hoped for the best. About two weeks after her surgery she wanted to continue Effiji Breath. I wondered how safe it was, especially since she wanted to do it everyday to speed up her healing process. Her doctors had told her to be completely inactive for 6 weeks.

I was a young man without much experience and was unclear if breathing in her chest and heart strongly was a safe thing to do but after much discussion we decided to try it out the first day. Much to both of our surprise she had no difficulty doing it and found it liberating and healing so we kept going. She felt fantastic for someone who just had surgery. That week we did the breathwork every day.

The following week she went back to her doctor who was simply astounded at how fast her healing was going. After that experience I began to look at the practice differently. I thought to myself, “if breath is life how can this be bad for you?”

While, over the years I have learned to modify the practice for safety, pregnancy, age and health related reasons, I firmly believe after working with thousands of people that your breath is there to give you life. If you can take deep breaths or do more rigorous practices like Effiji you are increasing the amount of oxygen you receive and therefore the amount of chi or life force energy to positively affect your life.