#389: Publish with a Purpose: How Box Breathing Can Increase Your Focus for Writing

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Hey, Kingdom Writers. This is Shelly Hitz, and in this episode, we're going to talk about how box breathing can increase your focus for writing. And this is something that I have really become passionate about over the last few years. If you know my story, you know that for most of my life, I've struggled with anxiety and stress and just all the things. And one of the things that I have found that really helps me is breathing. Now, breathing, I believe, is a gift from God. Now, there might be people out there teaching breathing that are New age or that are this or that are that, but breathing is a natural thing that God has given us as a gift to use, and I just believe we should use it. And I really think that most of you as writers, if you would implement some breathing exercises into your regular routines, and even if you would just do one minute of breathing exercises before you start writing or marketing or whatever you're working on, I just think it can make all the difference, because I've seen the difference in me, and I typically do some kind of breathing exercise almost every day now. So breathing is one of the things from our autonomic nervous system that we can actually control. So one of the things that, you know that we can actually have control over now, if you try to hold your breath too long, your body's going to react and just want to start breathing again. But then as I started doing some research, I realized that diaphragmatic breathing is. Is what has been proven to decrease the stress hormone called cortisol. So that's something I know that's probably been off the charts in my life over the years is cortisol and breathing through your diaphragm, allowing your belly to pooch out, right? Like, I know for us women, our culture tells us to suck it in, but we want you to actually allow your stomach to expand band and use your diaphragm, and it triggers things in your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest system when you breathe out longer than you breathe in. So very, very basic. If I just want to do some basic breathing to calm myself, if I'm feeling anxious or if I'm feeling, you know, some sort of worry or whatever it is, I'll just breathe in for a few seconds, and then I'll breathe out longer than I've, you know, than I breathed in. And so four seconds in, six seconds out. That's just a real easy way to calm yourself when you're feeling stressed. And, like, if you're sitting down and you're like, I just don't know what to write, I don't know what to do. You know, if you have all of this stuff come up in your mind, you know, we all are fighting our inner critic. In many ways. That's the villain of our story. And so we're. We take back territory from the enemy through prayer, through all the things that we've been teaching you and replacing the lies with the truth. But also, you can literally calm your nervous system and help you get into that place of focus through breathing. And it's amazing. Breathing gives us a direct connection to the vagus nerve in our parasympathetic nervous system, which can affect the communication from the vagus nerve to the brain. So basically, breathing gives us a way to hack into our own brain and nervous system. It's amazing, isn't it? It has often been said that breathing is the bridge between the brain and the body, and I love the alliteration of that. Breathing is the bridge between the brain and the body. And it's so true. So, you know, God made it this way on purpose as a gift to us. And I just really believe that as writers, if you take this one podcast and apply it, you're going to see a change. You're going to at least feel a change over time as you're sitting down to write or to work on your. Your writing, publishing, and marketing. So the way that I encourage you to do it is to breathe in through your nose like you're smelling flowers, and then breathe out through your mouth like you're blowing out candles on a birthday cake. So you're smelling the flowers and then you're blowing out the candles. And you might want to even put your hand on your stomach so you can feel your stomach expand and then come back in. Your diaphragm is a muscle, and it may be weak and out of practice because, like I said, our culture tries to get us to hold our stomach in and hold our gut in, and you can't hold your gut in and take a deep breath at the same time through your diaphragm. So there are so many benefits to breathing. Reduces stress, anxiety, depression. It can assist with pain management, it can help you sleep better. There's different different breathing techniques for sleeping. One of them that you can try is breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven seconds, and then breathing out for eight seconds. That is an amazing one. Anytime you are having trouble sleeping, or also if you want to calm down, that one is really great as well. But it also does things like reduce your blood pressure, increase heart rate variability and oxygenation, increase enhance pulmonary function and improve cardiorespiratory fitness and respiratory muscle strength. Like all of these big words from anatomy. I was a physical therapist and I took anatomy, so I understand most of that. But if you don't just know it's good for your body, it's really good for your body. So I've talked about a couple techniques that can actually calm you down that's, you know, like, breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for six seconds. Seconds, Breathe in for four seconds, hold for six seconds, breathe or seven seconds, breathe out for eight seconds. So that's the four, seven, eight. But what I really wanted to cover in today's episode is called box breathing, because this is the kind of breathing that will really help you with your focus. The Navy seals actually use this breathing exercise to create a calm and focused mind with a balanced and energized physical state. So it's great to use anytime you feel low focus and energy before a meeting or a performance of any kind. Or like I said before, you sit down to write or to work on your marketing or whatever you're working on. And I love this quote. This is from the Breathwork app, and this is a free app, but they do try to get you to buy things. So some of them, sometimes it's hard to find it all. But their box breathing.

Breathing exercise that's free in the app is called Recharge. And then the one that's the four seconds in, six seconds out is called Calm. And that one is the one that I have used a lot. But in their app for the Recharge, which is the box breathing, they say intentional deep breathing calms and regulates the autonomic nervous system. The slow holding of breath allows CO2 to build up in the blood. An increased blood CO2 enhances the cardioinhibitory response of the vagus nerve when you exhale and stimulates your parasympathetic system. This produces a calm and relaxed feeling in your mind and body. And the increased levels of CO2 also help facilitate the release of oxygen in your cells. So all that to say, it's really good for you.

There's like, there's two apps that I use because sometimes you just want to do it and not have to think about it. Now you can totally do this on your own. Just look at the, you know, the, the timer and the clock or whatever it is that you're wanting to use. You can totally do this on your own. But I use the Breathwork app. B R E A T H W R K. So there's no o in the work. And there's a free app called I Breathe. And it's just the lowercase I and the word breathe. B R E A T H e. That app is completely free. You can remove the ads by paying a few dollars. The ads aren't overly annoying. But you can also use that app. So let's just give it a try. And what you'll do is with the box breathing, you'll breathe in. So you want to smell the flowers. Breathe in for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, hold it for 4 seconds and then keep repeating. Now, if you're using the I Breathe app, the box breathing that they have automatically programmed in is five seconds. So you can do it five seconds too. And either way. But let's just try four seconds. So go ahead and breathe in.

Now hold.

Now breathe out.

Now hold.

Let's do it again. Breathe in.

Hold.

Breathe out.

Hold.

Alright, so that's just, you know, really simple.

Exercise that you can do anywhere at any time. And if you're somewhere where, where you get triggered by something or you're upset about something, just say, excuse me, I need to go to the restroom. Go in the restroom and do some breathing exercises. I have done this before and it really does help. So I know this is not something we normally talk about on the podcast, you know, all of this anatomy stuff and body stuff, but with my past experience as a physical therapist and having taken gross anatomy and learning about all the bodily functions like this totally makes sense to me. But then I have had years now of experience using this myself for, for my, my own issues with anxiety and to calm myself. And it works. It's something that, you know, you need to get into the habit of doing and, you know, just really make sure you're breathing in through your diaphragm, that your stomach is coming out as you breathe in, and then your stomach is coming in as you breathe out. But really, you can't do it wrong. Try it. Give it a try and let us know. Let us know if it helps you. Um, I hope that it. Like I said, the box breathing is something that even the Navy SEALs use to help with increased focus. And so this is something that you can use as well as a writer. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode and I will talk to you next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.