Breathing is one of the best ways to reduce your anxiety. You’re doing it anyway (just not necessarily in a way that’s helping your condition) and it’s possible to change your breathing technique at almost any time.
The problem when we’re anxious is that we tend to take shorter breaths and they’re often more rapid. Doing that once in while is OK – we pant when we’re out of breath for instance. But being conscious of our breathing is much better.
The good news about breathing exercises is that you don’t need any special equipment (you’ve already got your lungs!) and you don’t need a special place to do them. Because you’re already breathing regularly, a breathing exercise is just a conscious change to your natural habit.
The mere fact of focusing on your breathing and taking longer, deeper, breaths is good.
Which specific “technique” you use after that is really down to you – you’ll find that the basic technique will help, often almost instantly.
Take a reasonably long, deep breath. There’s no need to puff out your chest, just be conscious of the air filling your lungs until they’re fairly full. How long you spend taking this deep breath is up to you. Some people like to count the seconds they’re breathing in which is fine if it helps you break state and feel less anxious. It’s equally fine if you don’t count (or lose count) – this isn’t a breath holding competition.
Optionally, hold the deep breath for a short time. Don’t strain yourself when you do this and, again, the precise amount of time you hold your breath is up to you, if you hold it at all
Then take a long, deep breath out. Again, don’t stress about this. Your lungs won’t be completely empty at the end of this process and there’s no need to strain to get the last gasp of air out – that would be counterproductive. Just let the air leave your lungs as slowly as you can without forcing anything to happen. I like to imagine that any stresses and strains I had are leaving on this outbreath and vanishing harmlessly into the atmosphere. If I’m feeling playful, I imaging those stresses being contained in an air bubble that pops (or explodes!) when it reaches the outside world.
Repeat!
That’s the basic process of all the different breathing techniques that are around.
Most of them have a numeric value attached to help remind you roughly how long each part of the process should take.
So the 7/11 method is one where you count to 7 while you’re breathing in (count in your head unless you want weird looks from the people around you) and count to 11 when you breathe out again.
The precise numbers aren’t important and, when you’re starting out with this technique, there’s a good chance you won’t be too good at these really long, deep breaths. That’s fine -it’s perfectly normal.
So, if this is the first time you’ve done this exercise, you might decide to count to 3 when you breathe in and 5 when you breathe back out again. Part of the calming process is the fact that the outbreath is longer than the inbreath.
The numbers don’t have to be seconds – they’re just how you count in your head. So there’s no need to go back to the mode you used as a child to count seconds (elephant one, elephant two, and so on was how I did it when I was younger). You just need to get the ratio roughly right.
As long as you do that, you’re fine and you’ll find your anxiety starts to melt away naturally. Quicker than it would if you popped a pill and with absolutely no side effects apart from feeling calmer.
When you’re first starting to consciously use a breathing technique, it can be a good idea to have help. I know that sounds odd but our minds tend to be less co-operative when we’re in a state of heightened anxiety and any help we can get is good.
My “go-to” technique for anything like this is hypnosis. Because the process itself is calming, regardless of the topic being addressed.
You can get a hypnosis breathing exercise MP3 here – there’s even a sample of the track on that page so you can double check it sounds good and reassure yourself that it’s perfectly OK to use it.
The good news about breathing exercises is that you don’t need any special equipment (you’ve already got your lungs!) and you don’t need a special place to do them. Because you’re already breathing regularly, a breathing exercise is just a conscious change to your natural habit.
