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Breathing Deep: the Simplest Way to Calm Yourself

Image for 2017 New Year Resolution to Manage Anxiety
Call this Anxiety Management in a jiffy but yes it is true and comes without the fear of side-effects or addiction fears - the things we associate with conventional and modern prescription drugs for anxiety, IBS, depression, obsessive thinking...



Personal Anxiety Management Experiences

I have to confess that I am an anxious soul. I don’t get flustered easily but a sense of uneasiness often overcomes me. I have tried anti-anxiety medications too. Called anxiolytics, these medications are supposed to slow down the release of chemicals that induce a sense of anxiousness. However, I didn’t find these to be too helpful. What has helped is a very simple change I have made to my everyday existence—breathing in a more relaxed manner.



Browsing the web, I realized that most of us don’t breathe right. When anxious, this problem worsens as we breathe even more shallowly. I decoded this pattern in my daily life too. Every time I got into an over-thinking mode, my breathing was laboured. I would inhale air in huge bouts and gasps. The consistent smooth breathing pattern was missing. According to researchers, shallow breathing is both a result and cause of anxiety.



It starts when you feel anxious and it also stimulates anxiety symptoms like headaches, acidity or that burning feeling in the stomach. I have put a simple practice into motion. Whenever I feel overworked or getting restless, I shun my work for a minute and start breathing deeper, drawing in more air and exhaling it slowly. The idea is to make your breathing more relaxed. The results are better than depending upon Valium or Prozac.


1 comment:

  1. I have to share for February 19, 2018: this is for all the anxiety-philes and anxiety-o-holics. You might have another method. This is about clenching your wrist like you are pressing a ball into submission. No, this is not that stress ball method. Just imagine the ball. all four fingers should dig into the inside of the palm and the thumb should feel labored - it really works and I have mentioned this in a couple of other, anxiety-management discusison on this blog - just hit the search bar and enter the word "anxiety" without the double quotes to get a quick glimpse of all of my anxiety inputs and discusisons up to today

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