Deepening your breath capacity - Part 1

The way you breathe has a direct effect on your mental-emotional state, and the opposite is also true: like a catch 22, an anxious state triggers shallow dissociated breathing, which in turn increases your body’s fear response, experienced often as what we call anxiety.

Controlling our mind when in panic mode is a nearly impossible feat - however regulating your breathing is not, and it turns out that when you consciously regulate your breath, the mind follows suit and becomes stabilized: deepening insight, awareness, and your conscious capacity to respond skillfully to threat/stress.

Next time you find yourself caught in anxious or circuitous thinking, pause, take a time-out, and close your eyes:

1. Feel your shoulders relax on your back and your hips root into your seat.

2. Rather than trying to “deepen your breath”, or mentally solve the problem at hand, quiet your mind and begin to slowly count and lengthen each exhale, until you are consistently breathing out for 7-10 counts consistently and you have felt your inner state shift.

3. Go slowly, the feeling of rushing is part of what triggers anxiety. Remind yourself there is no need to rush. Let your breath become your inner ally and guide.

4. Practice this breathing for 5-10 minutes and feel your whole system shift into a deeper, clearer state.

Learning to “breathe deeper” consistently, and especially when triggered, takes regular consistent practice - until it becomes second nature and you can automatically resort to it in high-pressure moments.

Practice this for 5 minutes daily in the morning or evening to begin to tap into the power of the mind-breath connection in daily life.