Stress busting tip number 9.... and breathe

Hi there, my name's Caroline Cavanagh and I'm an anxiety specialist. I'm here today to share tip number 9 in my advent calendar of tips that can help reduce stress. And so far I've shared a couple of tips that are really good at preventing stress, other tips that are really good to use kind of in the moment. Today I'm talking about the first of 3 that I have I call my ABC, the first aid Tips to stress. They're the ones to use when you're kind of like way up there in terms of stress. So I call them the ABCs. I don't know if you've ever done first aid, they talk about the ABC of resuscitation. It's kind of like that real, what do you do in that moment where before you get into even curing or bringing things down? And it might sound flipping obvious, but this one is about breathing. Yes, I know we all do it all of the time. But when you get in a stressed situation, your breathing changes. And you may have heard people say, just, just breathe, when someone's stressed. That's because they know that when you're stressed, the breathing tends to become really rapid and really shallow. And there's a really good reason behind that, because when you're at the height of stress, you've got into what's called a fight-or-flight mechanism. And so your body is geared up To either run away or attack whatever the source of anxiety, of stress is. And so all of the body's physiology is going, right, I'm either gonna fight or I'm gonna run away from something. And so your breathing becomes very rapid to pump oxygen into all of those muscles, into all of your senses that go to a higher level of sensitivity, to fuel them. And your brain, everything is going, right, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready. But then there's nothing to fight if you're stressing about how many Christmas presents you've still got to wrap, or what the kids are going to be doing tomorrow. There isn't an outlet. And so breathing, and actually taking manual control of your breathing, can switch you out of that— Mmm. What's called the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight, and manually kick it back into the parasympathetic, which is known as the rest and digest. And note, there are shedloads, huge amounts of breathing systems out there. Find one that you like, but the one that I prefer and teach to all of my clients is one where you simply control the out-breath. None of this kind of breathe in for 6, hold for 6, out for 6. Great technique when you're relatively calm and doing yoga, but when you're in a high-stress situation, I don't think that's really tenable. So this technique is just about controlling the out-breath, and if you're a visual person, imagining that you're breathing onto a little candle flame but just making it flicker, not strong enough to actually blow it out. So it's a bit like— and you keep going until literally there's no breath left, and then you can't help yourself but you'll breathe back in. But when you breathe back in, you breathe in for longer, so like a really sharp, shallow, fast breath. And You breathe out for longer, you breathe in more deeply, you breathe out for longer, you breathe in more deeply, and so it goes on until you're back into a calm, natural breath. And it just takes the brain out of this, as we said, sympathetic nervous breathing to parasympathetic nervous breathing, where you are back in control. And that just takes the edge off of that high stress that then makes it feasible to bring in one of the other techniques that I've been going through and have still got to come. So day 9, Uh, my maths— 15 still to come. Um, so out of those, you can then bring in one of these others. Hi there, thank you very much for the thumbs up, that's great to see. So as I said, this is number 1 of the ABC. The other 2 are still to come, but breathing, we do it all the time, but we don't necessarily have control of that breathing. And when you can take that control back, you can really take the edge off that high level of stress and drop it down just to a lower gear where you can be more in control and take more evasive action to get down to relaxation again. So as with all of these posts, I really value and appreciate any of them that are shared because the more people know about these techniques, the less stress we're gonna have out there in the world. It's all about you being in control of you because then whatever's going on out there isn't going to affect you in the same way. So anyone that's kind enough to share the post, I will put your name in a hat, and names are going to be drawn out of that after Christmas and given the opportunity to work with me, with my compliments, one-to-one. And also, if you haven't liked my Facebook page, I would really, really be massively grateful for anyone that would be kind enough to do that, because again, it all helps the reach and more people see these posts. So anyone that's kind kind enough to like the page, your name will also go into the same hat for the opportunity to work with me. If you want to get a bit of a heads up or have all of these tips in one place, there is a free ebook that you can download from the website, which is simply carolinecavanagh.co.uk. If you go to the resources page, there are half a dozen or more free resources, and one of those is just simply the ebook. You'll find it if you go there. And that has 30 of the tips, 24 of which I'm sharing on video over Advent. So you'll get even a few more that you can add to your virtual toolbox, so that means whatever situation is going on out there, there's a tool that you can bring out that will help reduce the stress and keep in a star— in a calm state of mind. And now I'm going to try and find one that will allow me to speak clearly. So for now, thank you very much for listening. I will be back tomorrow with tip number 10, into double figures already. Bye-bye for now.