Implementing a self-care routine can make you feel better, improve your physiological state, and enhance your mood. What’s more, some self-care tools can also benefit your dog! Breathwork is a focus on intentional breathing, and it can help you send positive messages that impact your pup.

What Is Breathwork Training?

Breathwork can be as simple as paying attention to your normal breathing. More advanced techniques involve manipulating continuous breath patterns to activate or ground yourself. The benefits of breathwork for people are powerful. Breathwork connects us deeper in our bodies and brings us back to the intelligence within our own systems. It boosts energy, creates awareness around feelings, and clears the mind by granting us the opportunity to be still with ourselves.

The Scent Link Between You and Your Dog

Breathwork also has advantages that support our dogs and our relationships with our dogs. Dogs have roughly 600 million olfactory receptors, around four to five times more than what humans have. Studies show that this keen sense allows them to smell stress, sadness, happiness, and grief based on the production of chemicals like hormones and neurotransmitters.

For example, low serotonin is associated with depression, and cortisol is associated with anxiety. Many hormones are detectable in our breath and sweat. Dogs pick up on changes in smell, so they often notice even the tiniest shift in our emotions. In other words, your mood sends messages to your dog about your feelings and their surroundings, and that can impact their mood and behavior.

Breathing Together: How Breathwork Training Can Benefit Your Pup

Breathwork helps put the brakes on stress and the health problems associated with it. By practicing your breathing techniques, you can lower blood pressure, sleep better, improve immune system function, and tune into your body’s ability to relax. What’s more, your dog will likely pick up on your calmer vibe.

Even if your breathwork training doesn’t directly impact your dog, feeling better might motivate you to seek out more fun, play with your dog for longer, take more walks, and spend more quality time with your pup.

Beyond that, you can sit down with your dog beside you and share the experience of breathwork. It is a joy to spend time in a quiet space, feeling the conversation of mutual love between you and your dog. Breathe in the positivity of the interaction and embrace how it can enhance your bond. Breathe out the simplicity of just being together, and how that can be more than enough.