You’ve been breathing your whole life, so it should be easy to just “take a deep breath”… right? If you’ve ever seriously struggled to match the pace of structured breathwork in a yoga class or guided meditation, you know it’s not always that simple.
And if slow, deep breaths elude you on the regular, you may have wondered if it means something about your overall health and wellness. That’s really not necessarily the case, says Michael J. Stephen, MD, a pulmonologist and the author of Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of Our Extraordinary Lungs.