You've heard it since you were a kid. "Take a deep breath!" "Calm down!" You know that there is an intimate relationship between the way you feel and the way you breathe. And breathing as a skill not just as an unconscious act is receiving more and more attention as a way to improve the quality of one's lived experience.
James Nestor's new book Breath: the new science of a lost art is an example of this. And so is a recent Yale study put out by Emma M. Seppälä and her colleagues, which shows that the SKY breathing technique went above and beyond emotional intelligence training and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in improving six key areas of the lives of college students: depression, stress, mental health, mindfulness, positive affect and social connectedness.
This data, along with many other studies on the efficacy of these ancient practices shows promise in integrating regular brief breath-based interventions into a variety of settings, including classrooms - virtual or otherwise.
This takes "take a deep breath" to a whole new level...
Martín Blank, MAPP, RYT is the founder and director of the Astronauts Social Emotional Learning Program