“If life gives you lemons, just take a deep breath in and exhale the sweet smell of success.”
What is Deep Breathing?
Deep breathing is a relaxation technique done through actively taking slow, deep breaths to optimise the main muscle of breathing, your DIAPHRAGM.
What prevents us from breathing this way?
When experiencing anxiety, people take rapid, shallow breaths. Even when NOT under stress, you can feel like you are hyperventilating, multiplying the succession of shallow breaths. This leads to stress, which causes shallow breathing, increasing stress, and so on, in a vicious cycle. This can lead to poor posture as our muscles tend to tense up when we feel stressed or anxious.
Benefits:
Diaphragmatic breathing has been shown to have incredible mental and physical health benefits.
- It can help reduce stress, anxiety and depression
- Increase problem-solving abilities
- Physiological benefits such as lower blood pressure and heart rate
- It can also help in dealing with medical conditions such as asthma and insomnia
- To relieve pain, e.g. chronic tension-type headaches
- It gives us courage, e.g. dealing with conflict, public speaking and getting that shot of injection 😉
Some helpful tips:
- Be present in the moment. The most important step is to shift your mind and focus to the moment at present
- Pace yourself, do not rush the process and do not be hard on yourself
- Lie on the floor, using your hands to feel your stomach rise and fall. Pay attention to whether your chest is rising or your diaphragm. Focus on breathing through the lower, not the upper, torso.
- Practice breathing in and out through your nose, taking long breaths
- Try to practice once or twice a day, always at the same time, in order to enhance the sense of ritual and establish a habit.
- Try to practice at least 10–20 minutes each day
