Breathing exercises to help improve your study

Tiredness and sleepiness during study are often caused by poor ventilation. It is especially harmful to smoke while studying! One cannot live without breathing. Your brain needs oxygen for fulfilling its functions. Therefore, it is not exaggerated to say that you need to breathe in order to study.

In the morning or during the day, when you want to take a break, you can do the following breathing exercises:

1. Lie flat on your back with the neck on the floor, knees bent and arms extended along the body. Close your eyes, slightly open your mouth and relax your lips and tongue. Focus only on how you breathe for three or four minutes. Breathe in gently and profoundly through the nose, as you count to five. Hold your breath for a moment, then breathe out through the nose, again counting to five. Inspiration and expiration must be regular and equal.

Our breathing activity can be classified in three categories:

Abdominal breathing, that affects the lower part of our lungs. This type of breathing is good for relaxing, and also very healthful.

Thoracic breathing involves the medial part of the lungs and is fit for loud reading and reciting.

The best breathing corresponds to the upper part of the lungs and is used for singing exercises.

1. a) Sit on the floor with your back straight and your legs crossed as if you were doing yoga exercises. Inspire slowly and deeply through the nose, imagining that you are filling the three parts of the lungs described above.

This exercise involves breathing as a whole: inspire slowly through the nose, filling the inferior part of the lungs, then the central part and, finally, the upper area. These are not three separate exercises, but three phases of the same respiratory process.

1. b) However, if needed, you can do separate exercises for each pulmonary zone:

– For abdominal respiration, put on hand on your ribs, pull back your stomach and breath in to enlarge your thoracic cavity as much as you can. As you expire, massage your ribs with your hands. It should take you five seconds to inspire and another five to expire. Repeat this exercise five times.

– To improve your breathing, put your hands on your collarbone, pull in your stomach, and inspire filling up your thorax and chest. You will notice that your collarbone raises a little. Use the same timing as in the previous exercises.