“We loved breathwork so much, we took the breathwork coach on our corporate retreat,” explained a senior partner of a major law firm. “It was the only time I’ve ever been able to turn off my monkey mind,” she continued. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but off they went… 15 litigation lawyers and a breath coach flew to Tasmania to practice breathwork.
It’s not surprising that corporate wellness & breathwork programs have become popular in recent years as companies recognize that stress is a major issue in the workplace. Workplace stress leads to burnout, decreased productivity, and even physical health problems. Ask any type-A, overachiever about the perils of being “on” all of the time. Progressive companies understand the importance of caring for their employees’ mental and physical health. That’s why many companies, like the law firm above, are trialling breathwork as part of their corporate wellness and stress management programs. In this blog post, we will discuss what breathwork is, why businesses need it, and how it can benefit employees in the workplace.
If you’ve worked a corporate 9-5, you know that the weeks are long but the years short. Monday becomes Tuesday and the next thing you know it’s been two years. The point is spending one-third of your life in an unhealthy environment shouldn’t be taken lightly. The average employee spends 40-50 hours at their place of work and eats one-third of their meals there as well. Research shows that you can’t make up for a toxic workplace in the other two-thirds of your life.
Employee wellness is important because it directly contributes to the health, quality of life, and success of employees. When a company values employee wellness and implements programs that prioritize it, they are creating an environment that encourages better overall performance. Studies suggest that improving employee wellness can lead to increased job satisfaction, greater productivity and creativity, improved concentration and communication skills, more cost-effectiveness in operations, and higher morale among employees. In addition, prioritizing employee wellness can also help reduce the risk of absenteeism and turnover rates due to stress or burnout.
For employees, it’s your life. You’ve got to decide whether you’re working to live or living to work. For companies, the tangible benefits of focusing on employee wellness are numerous. People will show up to work. They know that the company cares about them so they are more likely to be committed and do their best work. They avoid burnout and are impactful in the long run. The only way forward for employees who are conscientious of their health is to work for a company that feels the same way.
Breathwork is a practice that involves isolating the respiratory system to control and regulate the breath. In corporate wellness programs, employees can use breathwork to manage stress, tame anxiety, and improve concentration and focus. Through a few simple breathwork techniques, employees can access their parasympathetic nervous system and reduce feelings of overwhelm at any time.
A breath instructor can teach employees how important nasal breathing is for stress. Nasal breathing naturally helps people reduce the number of breaths they take per minute. It also results in a lower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure, and balanced neurochemistry. When humans are calm and not reactive to stressors, their body burns fat instead of storing it.
Breathwork can also improve focus and concentration. When we feel stressed, our minds gravitate towards negativity and compulsive overthinking. This makes it difficult to concentrate on the task or find a solution to our problems. By focusing on breathing, employees can quiet their minds and improve their ability to concentrate. This can lead to increased productivity and better decision-making.
You know that person at work who is always sick or has a headache or just isn’t feeling their best? The “always something” co-worker? In many cases, this general feeling of malaise can be linked to poor breathing habits. Mouth breathing can exacerbate obvious conditions such as snoring, sinusitis, sleep apnea, and asthma. But mouth breathing can also be linked to seemingly unrelated conditions including anxiety, chronic inflammation, congestion, poor posture, hypertension as the heart works harder, adrenal fatigue, and nervous tension as the nerves become destabilized. Mouth breathing affects every system in the body in a negative way.
A breathwork practitioner could take a look at your sickly co-worker, run a few tests, and determine whether they breathe through their mouth. The coach would then recommend a breathwork practice that shifts the person away from mouth breathing both during the day and at night. Imagine going from long nights of interrupted sleep, panicked breathing habits that are uncontrollable under stress, and always being sick and congested to feeling well-rested and healthy. This is why many people feel they are given a new lease on life when they learn breathwork. Take a look around your workplace, how many people are always stressed or sick? Now, see if you notice mouth breathing.
What about your co-workers that are chronically stressed out? Do you know someone who is always on the brink of burnout? Why is it that two people with the same workload can have totally different abilities to cope? Burnout and hyper-stress are not normal. They are a sign of an inability to regulate your stress response.
The stress response is a series of steps that occur when an individual is exposed to a stressful event. It begins with the individual perceiving the situation as a threat, which then triggers the body’s fight-flight-freeze response. This causes the release of hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, which can lead to an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, and other physical reactions like sweating. Depending on how one responds to the situation, it can lead to ongoing physical and mental tension or ultimately to an adaptation where you learn to cope with similar events in the future.
How can you take your worst days at work and turn them into a mechanism for learning how to control your stress response? Breathwork.
In a recent study, daily deep breathing exercise lowers resting blood pressure, reduces stress, and minimizes anxiety in people with sedentary jobs. In fact, even a single bout of deep breathing (5-20 minutes) reduced feelings of anxiety in healthy young and older adults. Deep breathing exercises are very simple. You can practice yogic breathing or Pranayama, diaphragmatic breathing, and abdominal breathing all too similar effects.
Essentially, deep breathing helps you activate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm yourself when faced with a stressful situation. For example, you could use deep breathing before an important presentation or sales pitch to deactivate your innate fight-flight-freeze response and give yourself the ability to relax, think, and deliver. On the flip side, you can use deep breathing when something goes wrong – you receive an email from an angry client, make a costly mistake, or feel overwhelmed by all the tasks on your plate. Deep breathing cools your sympathetic nervous system and shows you how to ride the waves of stress.
The researchers in the study above recommended that deep breathing exercises be integrated into the workday as part of the culture at work and be done by employers/managers as well. They suggested that employers’ attitudes toward breathing breaks must be perceived as positive by employees and there should not be pressure from management to work during breaks, which must be separate from lunch breaks. Overall the key to the success of any employee wellness program is that employees should feel that their physical and mental health is valued more than their productivity.
People in all walks of life applaud the use of breathwork to reduce stress. As mentioned before, when we get stressed we need to breathe deeply and activate the parasympathetic nervous system. But what about when we need energy and focus on helping us fight a modern woolly mammoth in the boardroom?
From Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, many companies are bringing breathwork into their wellness programs to help employees tap into a heightened level of concentration and mental clarity with just a few minutes of effort. Science-backed breathing exercises give workers an effective alternative to traditional productivity methods – like coffee or energy drinks – by simply utilizing deep breaths and mindful pauses. Companies that have incorporated breathwork into their wellness offering have seen increased focus among employees, leading to higher levels of performance through a balanced approach.
Breathwork promotes focus and concentration in two ways. First, in the long run, regular breathwork enhances your ability to focus your mind and control impulsivity. Second, for immediate action, you can activate the sympathetic nervous system and prime your brain for a heightened state of alertness or even enter the flow state.
Many studies currently look at the long term benefits of breathwork and the practice’s effect on concentration and performance. A recent study has revealed that when we focus our attention on our breath, certain regions of the brain associated with emotion, attention and body awareness become activated. This finding published in the Journal Of Neurophysiology provides evidence that paying close attention to one’s breath can have far more benefits than merely slowing down one’s heart rate. It may also be involved in emotional regulation and increased body awareness, making it a useful practice for improving overall mental health.
People who practiced regular paced breathing like Cadence Breathing where you breathe 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out or diaphragmatic breathing were found to be less impulsive and more accurate on brain functioning tests than people who did not. Further, they also showed an increase in brain activity related to monitoring conflict and inhibiting their responses which are essential skills in high-stress roles.
Of course, a lot about being a successful human depends on managing stress – your health, job, family life, and overall well-being – all hinge on your ability to self-regulate. Yet, there are times when stress is a good thing. When it comes to stress, we usually think of it as a negative emotion – and for good reason. For example, when getting ready for a big sales pitch or a job interview, a small level of stress can actually help motivate and focus us on completing the task at hand. This is because our body releases certain hormones in response to stress that help us perform better than usual by bolstering confidence and memory recall.
Knowing when and how to use our body’s natural response to stress is an important factor in learning how to harness its power. Your stress response can be controlled by your breath. By increasing your breathing rate, you can also increase your heart rate, which will allow you to be better prepared or “pumped up” for the task at hand. Simply taking 10 deep breaths in a period of seconds can instantly reset some of the physiological changes that occur during a stressful situation. If you make this a warm-up when you need energy and focus, you will soon find yourself more confident and potentially more successful in tackling life’s pressing matters.
There are many ways to incorporate breathwork into corporate wellness programs. One option is to offer a guided meditation or breathing exercise first thing in the morning or before meetings. Another option is regular reminder emails or short explainer videos from the internal wellness team that prompt employees to check in with their breath.
Suggested activities include group breathing exercises, guided meditations, mindfulness practices, breathing games, and mini-retreats focused on breathwork. Additionally, implementing a system for tracking employee progress on their breathwork practice can help motivate them and provide visible benefits such as decreased sick days and higher job satisfaction.
In many cases, companies should bring in a breathwork instructor to teach employees different techniques. This can be a one-time workshop or a series of classes. A breath instructor can provide employees with the tools and knowledge they need to start their own breathwork practice that can be used to manage stress in the long run. Having a coach is a great way to make any change and a breath instructor will definitely motivate people to create a new habit.
As mentioned before, switching to nasal breathing is the first step to accessing the benefits of breathwork. Beyond that, employees can learn to pause once an hour to check in on their breathing. The goal is to instil a new habit of making time to prepare the body and slow the mind down before going back to the computer.
When stressors arise, the aim is to be reflective rather than reactive. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, which speeds up the heart rate and breathing rate. The brain is organising an attack on whatever threat it perceives. For employees, it’s all about using the breath to tell the brain that there is no reason to be afraid. Saying “I am triggered, I feel stressed” and then breathing slowly through the nose tells your brain you are safe. In the moment, instead of reacting, the breath can give you the ability to slow down what’s happening, see the story for what is, and make a decision.
One way of doing this is with diaphragmatic breathing through the nose for a minute or two. The key is to be slow, steady, and rhythmic and always breathe through the nose. Another technique is box breathing. Here, you inhale for 2 counts, hold for 2 counts, be still, exhale for 2 seconds, and hold for 2 seconds. Repeat for 2-5 minutes.
These techniques take little time but can have a major impact on stress levels and our ability to cope with daily challenges.
Breathwork is an effective tool for managing stress and improving well-being. By incorporating breathwork into corporate wellness programs, companies can help their employees balance their state of mind and emotions, as well as their physiological responses. Furthermore, offering breathwork shows employees that the company cares about their mental health. Whether it’s through regular breath check-ins or workshops with a breathwork instructor, the benefits of breathwork for employees are so significant that your team might hire its very own breath coach. By prioritizing employee well-being, companies can create a healthier and more sustainable workplace.
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