Beating Stress in the Workplace with Breathwork

Stress, something that we're all suffering. The world itself seems to have a huge increase in the amount of that mental health issues of seeing the stress and overload that people and burden that people are feeling. Is it because the world's less than safe? Probably not. Is it because there's a lot going on in the world that's being bombarded through social media, through news, through YouTube like this now? Yes, there is. However, there are particular places where we might feel more stressed. And in this episode I do want to discuss a perspective article in the Frontier on Physiology by a guy, a couple of guys, one called Tavonian and one called Craighead, and they published this paper in, in just a couple of months ago on looking at deep breathing exercises as a means to apply it to reduce stress in the workplace. Now if we think about stress in the workplace, then we are really considering people who are sat still for maybe seven, eight hours getting a small little break with a lot of inputs, outputs, information of financial concerns, KPIs, management, communication, etc. Etc. So stress in the workplace can be particularly challenging, especially if you have a high stress role. Maybe you're an individual who works in health care or you're in emergency care, or you're a lawyer or you're a doctor. These things can be quite challenging. If you're not taking breaks throughout the day to maybe get outside and get some fresh air and exercise, then what this can do over the long term is going to increase risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, etc. Etc. And what this paper was looking at was the applications to use deep breathing as a means to reduce the risk of things like chronic disease and diseases related to stress. What did they define as deep breathing? And this is where it gets particularly interesting, especially for people in the breath space that may have a background in Buteyko or oxygen advantage. Deep breathing in this was defined as breathing 80% of your lung full or breathing at six breaths per minute at resonant frequency breathing and generally in Buteyko, the concept of deep and big, those two words getting mixed together is a concern for them and that's a concern because of CO2 levels. However, when it comes to relaxation and bringing down stress, actually deeper breathing, taking a big breath will stretch the the mechanical receptors in the lungs and that can send information back to the brain via the vagus nerve. To say that actually to release some kind of stress and tension that then becomes a relaxation process which can have a benefit on things like reducing blood pressure. So, for example, literature, according to this literature, Meta analysis suggests that both systolic and diastolic can be reduced by around about 6 millimeters of mercury. So let's consider what that means. Systolic is when the heart pumps and heartbeats the pressure of the heart of the blood. Then diastolic is when the heart's relaxing. And generally what we want to have is roughly 120 over 80. So six breaths per minute, sorry, six millimeters of mercury is not massive, but it is quite significant just for five or 10 minutes of breathing per day. Now we add in different factors on that, including getting outdoors and doing a bit of exercise or taking more regular breaks and being aware of people's stress. Then what benefits are we likely to see physiologically? We're likely to see people having lower blood pressure, like I just said, therefore reduced risk of anxiety, chronic disease, mental health disorders. We're going to see people being able to focus for longer periods of time because there's less overwhelm and burden on them. We're going to see people being able to perform for longer periods of time and therefore take on more work as a means to increase productivity. We're going to see issues, we're going to reduce issues such as the health burdens and health costs related to absence, absenteeism, et cetera, et cetera. And this perspective article really gives a big of insight into looking at why is it that we have limitations to using deep breathing in the workplace and what can we potentially do? So some of the limitations are just not allowing enough breaks to occur the day of 9 till 5 or 9 till 7 with that 30, 45 minute lunch break in between to have some food and then rush back to your desk and get back onto work again. I know myself that in employment before there was that much stress and that much kind of time constraints that sometimes I was eating my lunch at my break, barely even taking a break. Now I could do that for four or five years in my mid-20s, late 20s and to get away with it still felt pretty burnt out. But doing that for 20, 30, 40 years, that is just a hazard to health. And that's the issue. And one of the things that was the major concerns was that productivity is often deemed a much more as a higher value than say products, say health or well being of an employee. So that itself needs to be flipped over. We need to see greater level of awareness around employee wellbeing, employee health, but also value in that workplace. And that is going to ingrain into the culture that is going to allow for less absentee and less workplace Sickness, reducing down the cost of those things. You're probably going to keep employers, employees for longer periods of time because they feel as if they are being looked after and cared after, and actually they go home feeling refreshed and reducing risk of burnout. So that is one of the limitations currently. The other limitation is the awareness of actual deep breathing itself. Now, how many people, unless you're in this space of understanding that we can utilize our breathing as a tool to bring down stress in the moment, we can utilize it as a practice over six or eight weeks, and we can bring down blood pressure and we can bring down sympathetic nervous states, and we can bring more awareness to everyday life. That is just. The information is not out there enough. And this is why I'm doing this video right now is to. And this podcast right now is to try and help people raise more awareness. So what needs to be done, more education needs to be done, more conversations need to be had, and we need to be able to learn how to actually implement it. How do we actually get this into the workplace? And that might be smartphones, it might be using apps, it might be using online courses, it might be using tailored breaks where we have an individual come in and support that role for. Let's train someone within the company so that person can actually then teach people how to do certain breathing exercises, certain relaxation protocols, what they do when they do them, and all that then can be utilized to build a new culture around our wellbeing. So I really think this, this paper does give a good perspective on it. I know in my personal training, my coaching myself, I have had people go from 140 over 110, which is stage two hypertension, to getting them to nearly hyper, not normal intensive, like 125 over 85 in eight weeks by, by using breathing and relaxation protocols and obviously exercise and meditations and getting people used to being able to downregulate and stress and being aware of their own position where they are in terms of their awareness of what their physical stress feels like, what their mental stress feels like. However, I actually presented this as a case study. I presented it to a group of cardiologists and a group of doctors, and all that really happened was just a little bit of a pat on the back, as if it was just well done. I'm glad that you're doing that. But it wasn't taken seriously. And why is it not taken seriously? And I think it's simply because it's not coming down through the medical schools, it's not coming down through the governments. It's not coming down from authority. It's not being deemed as something that is so. Has such potential. And that's what we need to change. We need to drastically, as a collective, share information like I'm sharing, however that is, in your way, whether that is just you starting in your own workplace, just showing people how to use simple breathing exercises to just bring them down once an hour. Now, I often speak to people in health professions every now and then when they're, you know, washing their hands or they get to go to the toilet or they have a break from when a patient is going into an MRI scan and they go to have a little break while the person's getting changed, there's an opportunity for 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes of simple, slow, deep breathing. And that accumulation throughout the day can be a big change, not just for their health and wellbeing, but as we've mentioned, the general workplace itself. So, look, share this information out there. Give us, give us a comment. It's not for me. It is just to help this general collective of what we're trying to achieve here and appreciate you all. Look forward to tuning in next week.