How to Breathe to Help Psychological ED
Introduction
This a simple but powerful tool that can help with psychological erectile dysfunction (ED) - breathing. Specifically, a pattern of breathing that’s been research-proven to help calm the body. When the body’s calm, it’s easier to get erections.
The Limitations of Breathing Techniques
Before we delve into this, it’s important to note that while breathing techniques can be incredibly helpful, they're not a standalone solution for everyone. If guys are still relating to sex as a pressure or a threat, it can be challenging for a breathing pattern alone to calm the body down to the point where it solves the ED problem. However, even if it doesn’t completely solve it, body/breathing-based solutions are likely to help, especially as you’re in the process of changing some of the problem thinking.
Mind vs. Body
Think of it as being like picking up a stick. You can pick it up from the mental end of the stick (which is most of what sex therapy and most of what’s on this site are about)…or you could pick it up from the physical/body end of the stick (what we’re just about to talk about)…or you could grab both sides and lift it. So let’s give some attention to the body end of the stick today. Maybe you can do some lifting from both sides.
Stanford professor Andrew Huberman, who conducted research proving the effectiveness of the breathing pattern we’re going to talk about, emphasizes how effective picking up the physical end of the stick can be. He says, “You cannot control the mind with the mind. What you should do instead is to look to the body. The nervous system includes the brain but also all the connections to the body and back again. So, when you can’t control your mind, you want to do something purely mechanical, like the physiological side. Once you take control of the body in that way, then the mind starts to fall under the umbrella of this top-down control.”
The Power of Breathing Patterns
There are many breathing patterns out there that can help to calm the body with the “top-down control” that Huberman talks about. The one we’re going to discuss is easy, backed by solid research, and helps in real-time when you’re actually in a stressful situation.
Huberman and another Stanford professor, David Spiegel, discovered that just doing JUST ONE of these breaths has proved to be the fastest physiologically-verified way to reduce your levels of stress and reintroduce calm. This response happens regardless of whatever physical or mental stress you may be under - so it’ll even help in the bedroom, again in real time. Just one of these breaths helps restore the level of balance in the nervous system. So basically, it helps your sympathetic ‘fight or flight’ system relax so the parasympathetic ‘rest and digest’ system can come back online. And it happens fast. It works the first time. It works every time.
The Connection Between Breathing and Erections
So, what does this have to do with erections? The Center for Sexual Medicine at Boston University is straightforward about it in their article 'The Central Mechanisms of Sexual Function:'
“Switching off the activity of the sympathetic nervous system enhances erections.”
If you want good erections, you want to be in that sympathetic system to be in ‘off’ mode. Doing just ONE of these breaths will help to shut it off.
The Benefits of Regular Practice
The study also looked at what happens when people do the breaths in five-minute cycles 1x per day. The people who did the five-minute cycles daily experienced the greatest amount of stress reduction of anyone involved in the study (they were comparing this breathing technique with meditation, box breathing, and another breathing technique). And it didn’t matter when or where they were when they practiced.
The Breathing Pattern for Psychological ED
The pattern is simple:
• Take one long deep breath in through your nose
• Just when your lungs feel full, take a strong brief extra inhale to completely fill your lungs
• Do a long slow exhalation through your mouth.
You can do this in the bedroom or any moment where you feel like your body needs some help in calming down. Or if you do it as a daily as a five minute practice, it'll help with your mood, your heart rate and your sleep.
Other Breathing Options for Psychological ED
But hey, you might be saying. If I'm with a partner on the spot, I can't be doing this weird breathing thing. OK, but one thing you can do is exhale. The way your diaphragm works in relation to your heart is that anytime you're exhaling, your diaphragm moves up. When your diaphragm moves up, your vagus nerve carries the signal to the brain to tell the heart to slow down. Your heart slows down, your body calms.
So even if you can't do the full physiological sigh, you can emphasize your exhalations....just let them slow down. When you slow your exhalations down, your heart rate will slow. When your heart rate slows, your body gets the message that it's ok to be calm. When your body calms, the signal goes back to your brain that you're safe.
REFERENCES
• Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal
• Longer Exhalations Are an Easy Way to Hack Your Vagus Nerve
• Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity
• The effects of breathing patterns on heart rate variability and decision-making in business cases
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