BREATH AND RELIEVE

Now you have watched the video and have your stressometer table, let's look at how you can use your breathing positively to guide you through your stress, plus your painful, uncomfortable, and scary feelings.

Let me confirm you understand why you breath in and out the way you do.....

When you exhale slightly longer than your inhale, a signal is sent to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system.

What’s the difference between the two?

Your sympathetic nervous system:

When you breathe in, you activate your sympathetic nervous system, which activates your stress hormones like cortisol that start pumping through your bloodstream.

·       Heart rate increases

·       Blood pressure rises

·       Breathing speeds up, pupils dilate, and blood vessels constrict

·       Sweat increases

You become more alert and tension increases. You’re preparing your body to face a threat, which was helpful when we had to fight off that wild rhinoceros! But if the threat is “I’m late for work,” this response isn’t especially helpful and can be damaging. It’s also called the fight or flight response. It’s our anxious state.

When cortisol is high too often and for too long, it disturbs the body's hormone balance, which creates stressful feelings like anxiety.

Your parasympathetic nervous system: 

When we breathe out, you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which activates your:

·       Muscles to relax

·       Heart rate to drop

·       Blood pressure to lower

·       The breath rate to normalize

You feel more relaxed and calmer. And we want more of this!

Guiding your breathing to exhale longer than you inhale will help you to feel calmer and more relaxed. Focusing on your breathing gives you control of your responses, and, yes, you’ll respond rather than react.

This breathing technique very quickly calms the physiology of the body and brain, and most people feel calmer and less anxious within two to three breaths.

So, using this technique, you’ll lower stress response and improve your physical and emotional health.

“RELAXATION BREATHING” TECHNIQUE

Here's how you are going to feel calmer:

Breathe in through the nose to the count of four down into your stomach.

Then breathe out through your mouth to the count of eight. When you breathe out, purse lips and gently blow like you’re blowing out a candle or bubble. Repeat this two more times.

Practice this breathing technique often throughout the day, especially whenever you’re stressed, anxious, scared, or tense. To make this one of your many new habits, pick a few times during the day

and set your alarm to go off at those times…AND BREATHE.

This is fantastic, simple yet so powerful to calm and relax you.