Breathe. Just breathe.
Hello, friend. Today is the first of a bunch of posts to help you calm any anxiety you might be feeling right now.
I posted a list of tips yesterday, but this post delves more deeply into the first tip, which is about breathing. I’m going to give you five different breathing techniques for you to try, so you can pick the one that works best for you.
Breathe. Just breathe.
When you become anxious, your breathing suffers. Instead of taking deep belly breaths, breathing becomes shallow and rises up into your chest. This is due to your “fight or flight” response being triggered.
When your breathing becomes shallow and rapid, here’s what happens in your system (as I understand it—and remember I’m an attorney and life coach by training, not a medical professional):
Your oxygen and carbon dioxide levels get disrupted. Your heart rate increases. Your muscles tighten up and become tense. You may develop dizziness or ringing in the ears or other sensations. If shallow breathing continues too long and your anxiety continues to spiral, you can actually develop shortness of breath or hyperventilate.
Image by Valeriia Bugolova from Unsplash
If you are feeling stressed or anxious, you can assess how you are breathing with a simple diagnostic tool. Put one hand on your chest, near your heart, and the other on your abdomen, near your navel. As you breathe, look down at your hands.
If you are breathing properly, using what is sometimes called diaphragmatic breathing, then the hand on your belly should be moving the most. If you are breathing shallowly, you will see the hand on your chest rising and falling and not notice much movement in the hand on your abdomen.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Here are a few breathing exercises you can try in order to restore normal, abdominal breathing:
For each of the following exercises, sit comfortably if you can. Try to relax your jaw and shoulders. Close your eyes if possible, and if you feel safe and comfortable in doing so.
Box breathing
It’s called “box breathing” because it involves four equal steps, or “sides”: Inhale for four seconds. Hold for four seconds. Exhale for four seconds. Hold for four seconds. In yesterday’s post, I provided this link to one of a bajillion sites where you don’t have to do any counting, just follow the visual guide on the screen.
Nasal breathing
Inhale deeply through the nose, allowing your belly to expand. Exhale slowly through the nose. The benefits of this form of breathing is that it gives your lungs time to extract lots of oxygen from your breath, since the lungs collect oxygen during both inhalation and exhalation.
Controlled breathing
Inhale through the nose for two seconds. Hold for one second. Exhale through your mouth using pursed lips for four seconds.
Alternate Nostril Breathing (Nadi Shodana Pranayama, for you yogis out there).
Sit up straight, but remain comfortable. Allow your left hand to relax in your lap. Use your right hand to accomplish alternate nostril breathing in the following manner: Rest the tips of your index and middle fingers against the area between your eyebrows. Exhale through your nose. Using your thumb, close your right nostril and inhale through the left nostril. Pause at the top of your breath, then use your ring finger to close the left nostril, then exhale from your right nostril. Pause briefly, then inhale through the right nostril. Pause at the top of your breath. Close the right nostril with your thumb, then exhale through the left nostril. Aim for 5-10 breathing cycles (or a total of 10-20 breaths). Try to create an even system for your breath, so you can do this as you would box breathing or inhale for 5 seconds hold for 2, exhale for 5 seconds, pause for 2.
If this sounds complicated, try doing it with online yoga instructor, Adriene:
4-7-8 breathing
In this breathing exercise, you inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, then exhale for eight seconds. This particular exercise is based in yogic breathing, and was developed by Dr. Andrew Weil as a means of calming the nervous system. Proponents of this method claim that it helps them get to sleep quickly.
In conclusion
It’s my hope that at least one of these techniques proves helpful to you. I am nearly certain that one of the reasons any of them work is because you are so focused on the counts or techniques that your brain stops focusing on the cause of your anxiety, but I also believe that improving the quality of your breath and the amount of oxygen in your system is good for you.
Deep, even, steady or slow breathing stimulates your body’s “rest and relax” response. Think of it as the flip side of the switch in your brain from “fight of flight”. You can have one or the other at any time, but not both. So the breath exercises listed above (and the many others available out there) are ways of turning off “fight or flight” and turning on “rest and relax.”
And who can’t use that?
If you would like to purchase Lower Your Anxiety, which is a compilation of 17 different exercises, practices and tips to help manage anxiousness, you can do that here.
