If you feel anxious, or if panic attacks are troubling you, try one or several of these breathing techniques to check on your state and to ease it.
If your symptoms persist, book an appointment with a specialist to talk your situation over and to choose the best option for therapy. With a joined-up approach that takes your individual make-up into account, you will be able to take back control and improve your quality of life.
As one option, use a daily qigong practice combined with breathing exercises and meditation, as an alternative or an addition to your own healing qigong
Abdominal, or diaphragmatic, breathing
Breathing with your attention on the diaphragm (the muscular dome that sits right under the lungs) will cut the energy your body spends on the act of breathing
Before you start
1. Lie down on the floor or on a bed with pillows under your head and knees. You may find it more comfortable to sit in an armchair, letting your head, neck and shoulders relax and bending your knees.
2. Put one hand on your belly (just under the ribs) and the other on the area of the heart.
3. Breathe in and out through the nose, noticing how the belly and the chest move as you breathe.
4. Try to tell your breathing apart. Are you breathing in so that your chest moves more than your belly? Try it the other way round, let your belly expand more than your rib cage. In the end, what you want is for your belly to move as you breathe, not your chest.
Practising belly breathing
1. Sit or lie down as described above.
2. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your belly, somewhere above the navel.
3. Breathe in through the nose, noticing how your belly rises. Your chest should stay relatively still.
4. Breathe out through the mouth with your lips pursed. Bring in the abdominal muscles to push out a little more air.
For abdominal breathing to become automatic, you need to practise it every day. Try doing the exercise three or four times a day, for 5-10 minutes.
If you have not used the diaphragm for breathing up to now, you will most likely even feel tired. But with practice it will all get simpler and easier..
The 2 - 3 - 4 breath
Deep breaths do not always help you calm down. A deep breath in is in fact linked to the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the "fight or flight" response. The breath out is linked to the parasympathetic nervous system, which governs the ability of our body to relax and settle.
Breathing in and out too often and too deeply can lead to hyperventilation, which reduces the amount of oxygenated blood reaching the brain.
At the moment when we feel anxious or are under stress, that is exactly when we start to breathe faster, and that is what throws our breathing off.
Find out more and read the method >>> here READ THE ARTICLE
The 2-3-4 breathing technique can be done in any position that suits you, including standing, sitting or lying down.
Focused breathing
When breathing is focused, deep and slow, it will help bring the level of worry down. You can do this practice sitting or lying in a quiet, comfortable place.
1. Pay attention to the sensations as you breathe in and out. Scan your body in your mind. You may feel tension in your body. Including tension you have never noticed before.
2. Take a slow, deep breath in through the nose.
3. Notice how your belly and the upper part of your body expand.
4. Breathe out in whatever way feels easiest. You can do it with a soft "groan", with an ah or an oh.
5. Keep this up for several minutes, paying attention to how your belly rises and falls.
6. Choose a word to focus on and say it as you breathe out. You can use words such as "safe" and "calm" and the like.
7. Picture a gentle wave “washing over” you as you breathe in
8. Picture yourself letting go, as you breathe out, of negative and anxious thoughts and of stale energy.
9. If something distracts you, gently bring your attention back to the breath and to the words you are saying.
Use this technique for 10 to 20 minutes every day, at whatever time suits you.
Guided meditation
During meditation in the qigong health practice, we use breathing practices inside the meditation. This helps to take the worry away and to change the patterns (templates) of thinking that feed stress. We raise awareness and help the body strengthen its defences and get rid of any blocks and tensions.
The practice goes at a pace and in a rhythm that suit you, sitting or lying down, in a place where you are comfortable and can quietly relax. As we relax the body, at that very moment we also even out the breathing.
Meditation will help you move through the various stages of a calmer, less tense reality by using visualisation. You will be able to gain control over the intrusive thoughts that cause worry and to get rid of stress.
You will build new habits and new ways of thinking.
Health practices specialist Mikhail Grishchenko. "I will help you be healthy, on your own!"
Take care and stay healthy!
