How to breathe

Just breathe. Sometimes life gets overwhelming and we need to shut it out. Your world may be smaller and smaller. You don’t have control over anyone else but yourself. Sometimes all you can do is breathe. Let the other stuff go. Just breathe in and out and be in the moment.

Did you know that breathing is actually the antidote to anxiety? When we get anxious our breathing rate and heart rate increase. If you can work on slowing down your breathing, you can reduce your heart rate. Guess what, when your heart rate decreases so does your anxiety.

Remember, we are wired for anxiety as it helps keep us alive. My guess is that you have heard of the fight or flight response. This is when our body fears that it will be harmed or killed, and our instincts take over. You may not have put the two things together. Most people want to stop being anxious. We can certainly turn down the intensity of our anxiety, but we can never totally get rid of it. Our anxiety also helps us to be motivated to do things. Think about it, if you didn’t get anxious, you wouldn’t be motivated to work or study. Our anxiety helps us perform. Having a moderate amount keeps us at maximum performance.

With the current state of the world most people are anxious. If you are anxious to begin with, it may seem as if it is at maximum capacity and you can’ t handle it. Perhaps you are having panic attacks. Regardless, below area some breathing exercises that will help. If you do these regularly you will have them at your disposal when you need them. If you only use them when you are having panic attacks it will be less helpful.

Breathing meditation

With this type of meditation, you sit in a comfortable position, and start with some deep breaths, in and out. Focus on the feeling as the air comes into your body and out of your body. As your mind wanders, don’t beat yourself up. This happens to everyone. We all have a running dialog in our head and we will be much more aware of it when we sit still and do nothing. Meditation is about letting things arise and not judging them. So if you feel antsy or irritable, that is OK. Just accept that is where you are at this point in time. If you do this for 8 minutes, you will notice that your anxiety has decreased. It also can help with depression and insomnia. If you have trouble falling asleep its great to do before bedtime to help quiet any thoughts going through your head.

Diaphragmatic breathing

You can take in more air and oxygen with this type of breathing. You can do this one sitting down or laying on your back. The way you do this is to put one hand just above your chest and the other at the bottom of your ribcage. Breath in through your nose and continue to do so until you can feel the hand below your ribs lift up. Be sure you breathe in deeply and fill your lungs as much as possible. You want your hand above your chest to remain where it is, and only the hand below your ribs to move. If the hand above your chest is moving, it means you are taking shallow breaths vs. deep ones. Continue doing this for 5-10 minutes.

4-7-8 breathing

You can also do this one laying down or sitting up. With this breathing technique you want to exhale all the air out through your mouth. Then you want to breathe in through your nose for a count of 4. Hold your breath for 7 seconds. Then breathe out through your mouth for a count of 8. Even doing 4 cycles of this will help you to relax

Breathing and meditation are considered a practice, so the more you do it, the better you will be. They recommend that you do it every day for 30 days, and then you will have it down.

Breathing exercises are great to lower our overall level of anxiety. They can be used for any anxiety evoking event such as a job interview, public speaking or needing to have a difficult conversation with someone. It just helps you keep your head at a calm and logical place to be able to handle a difficult situation in the best way possible. It helps us get out of our emotional brains and into our logical brains.

If you struggle with anxiety, please give me a call at 713-304-6554 and we can come up with a plan to help you decrease your anxiety.

Take care,

Debbie