The lungs play a vital role in our emotional experience. While we typically associate emotions with the heart or brain, emerging research shows that the lungs also store and process emotional energies. This reveals that our breath patterns directly impact our moods and ability to regulate feelings. By understanding the emotions held in our lungs, we can begin utilizing conscious breathing to transform our inner landscapes.
The Lungs & Emotions
While inhaling and exhaling may seem like a purely physical act, our breathing dynamically interacts with our emotions. The lungs connect to the vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem to the abdomen, communicating bidirectional signals between the brain and other internal organs. Through this neurologic channel, our emotional states directly impact respiratory patterns, and our breath in turn broadcasts information back to the brain, shaping how we process feelings.
This reveals that rather than being a one-way street, the relationship between breath and emotions contains an ongoing feedback loop. Stress and anxiety lead to changes in breathing rhythm, but consciously altering breath flow also helps relieve pent-up tension held in the body. Let’s explore some key ways the lungs store emotional energy and respond to shifts in mood:
Storing Muscle Memory of Emotions
Just as our muscles retain kinetic memory in the body, the smooth muscles surrounding the lungs also store emotional memories. Whenever we undergo stress or trauma, the intercostal muscles between the ribs may tense up or constrict. As these muscles constrict, they restrict breathing capacity.
Tight chest muscles retain a physical and energetic memory of difficult emotions like grief, heartache, or fear. Even once the acute emotional experience passes, the residual feeling remains imprinted in the tissue memory. With each inhalation, we unwittingly recreate and reinforce this muscular holding pattern.
By bringing conscious awareness and relaxation to the intercostal muscles, we can begin releasing stored negative emotions and trauma lodged in the lungs. Through practices like breathwork, massage, and energy healing, we can unravel the unconscious grip of muscle memory to support emotional healing.
Vagus Nerve Signaling
The vagus nerve directly links the lungs with the brainstem and limbic system, especially the amygdala and hypothalamus, which are involved in processing emotions, memories, and stress responses.
Information flows bidirectionally through the vagus nerve pathway. Stressful inputs from the amygdala can trigger rapid, shallow breathing, while relaxed diaphragmatic breathing activates the vagus nerve to relay calming signals back to the brain.
This direct neurologic feedback loop enables our breathing patterns to rapidly shift emotional states. By controlling our breath, we soothe the amygdala’s alarm signals and down-regulate the production of stress hormones like cortisol. Deep, conscious breathing sparks a relaxation response in the brain and body, all relayed through the vagus nerve.
Impact on Heart Rate Variability
The lungs and breath directly impact heart rate variability (HRV) – subtle fluctuations in the intervals between heartbeats. Higher HRV indicates greater adaptability and resilience, which enables emotional stability and wellbeing.
Slow, rhythmic breathing at about six breaths per minute maximizes HRV. As we breathe deeply into the lower lungs at this pace, it activates the vagus nerve pathway, lowering resting heart rate and bringing the nervous system into balance. This improves HRV and catalyzes overall relaxation in the mind-body system.
Rapid, erratic breathing has the opposite effect, decreasing HRV, flooding the body with cortisol and adrenaline, and triggering anxiety. By calming our breath when stressed, we can increase HRV and self-regulate the emotional chaos of fight-or-flight reactivity.
Detoxifying Stress Hormones
When we undergo acute or chronic stress, the adrenal glands flood the bloodstream with stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline. While these hormones help energize us to address survival threats, remaining in a constant state of fight-or-flight impairs health and fuels anxiety.
The lungs play an essential role in metabolizing and removing excess stress hormones from the blood. With each exhalation, we breathe out surplus cortisol, adrenaline, inflammatory substances, and toxic byproducts, allowing the body to reset back to homeostasis. Conscious, mindful breathing gives the lungs space to fully exhale, flushing stress chemicals out of the system.
Oxygenating & Stimulating the Brain
Proper oxygenation profoundly impacts our state of mind. When we breathe in fully, oxygen travels into the alveoli of the lungs and gets transported through the bloodstream to the brain.
Adequate oxygen supply supports cognitive functions like focus, decision-making, and emotional regulation. Even brief oxygen deprivation can set off panic and anxiety. Slow, full breathing delivers more fuel to the brain, keeping our mind clear and levelheaded.
Conversely, research indicates that hyperventilation, which blows off too much carbon dioxide, may cause anxiety. Though counterintuitive, slightly retaining some carbon dioxide yields a calming effect in the brain.
By practicing slow, full respiration down into the lower lungs, we can maximize brain oxygenation while preventing hyperventilation, supporting emotional equilibrium.
Activating the Relaxation Response
When we cultivate deep, rhythmic abdominal breathing for just a few minutes, it activates the relaxation response in the body. This counters the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system activation that drives anxiety and stress.
As we inhale fully down to the belly, the diaphragm descends, massaging the abdominal viscera. The long, slow exhale soothes the vagus nerve, lowering blood pressure and heart rate. This primes the parasympathetic nervous system for restoration and relaxation.
A few rounds of slow breathing reassures the brain that all is well, defusing stress. Regular relaxation response activation through conscious breathwork builds emotional resilience, bringing us into more expansive states of inner calm and balance.
Balancing Energetic Centers
According to yoga and Ayurvedic traditions, the lungs correlate with the heart chakra, the energetic center associated with emotions, love, and relationships. When we hold stressful emotions like grief, loss, sadness, or rejection in the lungs and heart chakra, it blocks our inner flow of energy and life force.
Conscious breathing dissolves the stagnation in the heart center, releasing suppressed feelings so we regain flow and expansive inner vision. As we clear old hurts, the heart chakra can open again to give and receive love. Deep rhythmic breathing sparks renewal at the very core of our being.
Breathing Practices To Release Emotions
We can utilize breathing exercises to discharge stored emotional energy in the lungs, renew our vitality, and relate to feelings from an open-hearted place. Here are some simple yet powerful practices:
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Lay on your back, place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose for a count of four, feeling your abdomen press into your hand. Pause briefly. Exhale gradually through your mouth for a count of six. Focus on using your diaphragm muscle to fill and empty the lungs fully. Repeat for a few minutes, finding comfort and relaxation in the breath flow.
4-7-8 Breathing
Sit upright with eyes closed. Exhale fully through your mouth. Seal your lips and inhale slowly through your nose for a count of four. Hold for seven. Exhale steadily through your mouth for eight. Repeat this cycle three to five times. Allow yourself to relax into the steady rhythm.
Ocean Breath
In a seated position, inhale and exhale normally through your nose. Next inhale fully, then exhale with a sigh “ahhh”. As you sigh, feel your chest and trunk open. Repeat for a few minutes, releasing tension with each exhale.
Heart-Focused Breathing
Sitting upright, place your hands on your heart center. Breathe slowly in and out through your nose for 60 seconds, feeling your breath energize your heart space. Notice any emotions stirred up, letting them flow through you.
Walking Breathwork
During a nature walk, choose a word like “calm” or “ease” as your mantra. Coordinate steps with your breath. For example, inhale for three steps, hold briefly for two steps, exhale for four steps. Let relaxation flow through you.
Alternate Nostril Breathing
Gently press your right nostril closed with your right thumb. Inhale slowly through the left nostril. Seal the left nostril with your ring finger and release the right nostril. Exhale through the right. Inhale right, seal, exhale left. Repeat 5-10 cycles, promoting inner balance.
The Mind-Lung Connection
While our lungs obviously perform the vital work of respiratory gas exchange, emerging science confirms that their role extends far beyond the purely physiological. Our lungs serve as an interface where the conscious mind can directly access unconscious emotional memories stored in the physical body.
Through cultivating presence with our breath, we contact all that we’ve held in our lungs – grief, heartache, trauma, restrictive beliefs about life, and suppressed parts of ourselves. By getting to know the terrain of our lungs, we shed light on inner realms that shape how we think and feel.
As we gently release and exhale the stuck energy in our lungs, it makes space for renewed vitality to bloom. The lungs crave oxygen, openness and movement. When we free our natural breath flow, we reclaim freedom of mind and spirit.
The Intelligence of the Breath
Rather than forcing a set breathing rhythm, we can trust the innate intelligence of the breath and body to guide our respiration. When we bring curiosity and presence to follow the breath’s lead, it organically shifts to discharge whatever energetic contractions we’re holding.
The breath contains its own intuitive arc – gently accelerating and deepening to unravel tensions before settling into tranquility. Through letting the breath move as it needs to, buried emotions arise and integrate, leaving us more spacious and resilient.
By patiently allowing the lungs their own rhythm and expression, they reveal layers of memories and tightly held energies. Over time, the body breathes through all it once contained to return to presence. We heal, expand, and reconnect with the natural flow of life.
The Reflective Pause
After exhaling, rather than hurriedly inhaling again, we can pause at the bottom of each breath cycle. This reflective pause allows us to check in with the body and integrate the effects of the exhale.
By not immediately taking the next breath for granted, we contact a state of restful awareness between breaths. This enables us to sense how the lungs are feeling, and notice if any emotions or blockages want to be discharged before inhaling again. The reflective pause reminds us that we always have a choice in where to go next with our breath, and our life.
Conclusion
While our breath expressions often run on autopilot, we have the power to consciously transform our breathing patterns, release suppressed emotions stored in the lungs, and come home to presence. As we liberate the energies trapped in our chest, we free up vital life force to nourish creativity, connection, and abundant flow. Our lungs remind us to receive each moment afresh, as the sacred gift it is.