Asthma is a condition that continues to affect more and more people with each passing year. Luckily, as time goes by, more and more techniques are being found to help relieve and, in some cases, even cure asthma. Two such techniques are asthma exercises that involve breathing and mental imagery.

How to Breathe

As you probably know, when you have an asthma attack your bronchial tubes constrict and don't allow air to pass in and out of them freely. Therefore, one of the most important exercises you can practice is breathing the correct way.

The first thing you want to do is practice breathing through your nose. As long as it is possible, you always want to breathe through your nose. Secondly, you want to practice filling your stomach with air every time you breathe in. Your stomach should inflate outward every single time you breathe in.

If you don't inflate your stomach when you breathe in then you're not breathing correctly. And if you aren't breathing correctly then you're not taking in as much oxygen as you can and you're also putting stress on other parts of your body.

You should practice breathing correctly every day so that when an asthma attack begins, you automatically know how to focus on your breathing and hopefully you can cut down both the length and severity of the attack.

Mental Imagery

Another important asthma exercise to practice is mental imagery. Practicing and getting good at mental imagery will relax you in your everyday life and it will also help you relax when an asthma attack begins to happen.

Mental imagery is similar to meditating but it isn't quite so involved. There are a number of different ways you can perform the asthma exercises that involve you sitting quietly and imagining peaceful and or empowering situations.

Examples of different mental imagery exercises include imagining you are breathing in clear, clean air and breathing out bad air. While you breathe you imagine you're filling with the good air so that you become fresh and rejuvenated.

Another example of mental imagery is imagining that you are a giant tree that has its roots extending deep into the earth. This tree keeps you strong and able to withstand the greatest storms in your life.

Some Final Words

There are many things you can do that will help with your asthma. Some of these things are asthma exercises that you can and should do on a daily basis.