Caroline Cavanagh teaches a breathing exercise to calm your nervous system when stress kicks in. Extend your out-breath longer than your in-breath to trigger the parasympathetic response. Practice it when you're calm so it works when you need it.
Chapters
Breathing. Yeah, I know it seems obvious, but how we breathe has a huge impact on how we feel. Breathing is one of those subconsciously managed things, which basically means we don't have to think about it. But the subconscious part of the mind is also responsible for monitoring your emotions, so if it senses a change in stress, It will change your breathing, which is why when we're stressed we tend to breathe more rapidly, more shallowly, and our heart rate increases. Because this is one of our most primitive reactions, the fight-or-flight response. Your brain literally getting your body ready to fight or run away from the source of stress. But we can consciously Override that, because often the source of stress is something you can't run away or fight, but you can control your response to it. And the way to do that is to take conscious control of your breathing. There are many, many breathing techniques out there, and I've tried a lot of them, but this one is the one I prefer because it's easy. And let's face it, if you're stressed, you don't want difficult. And it's simply controlling each out-breath. Every time you breathe out, breathe out for longer until you literally can't breathe out anymore. And when you get to that point, you will automatically breathe back in, and you breathe back in more deeply. And when you breathe out for longer, your breathing then naturally becomes deeper and deeper. It can sometimes help to imagine that you've got a little candle flame in front of you, and your intention is to make that flame flicker for as long as you possibly can without blowing it out. Just a very simple— when you can't breathe out anymore, you'll breathe back in again. Even doing half a dozen or so of these breaths will flick you back out of that fight or flight instinct back into the relax and recuperate mode. It's not going to make you feel instantly relaxed, but what it does mean is the brain is then switched into a mode that makes other techniques more accessible to you. And this is why I call breathing one of my first aid responses. It's that initial thing to get you over the crisis until the longer-term treatment can come into place. What I encourage you to do is to practice this when you're not stressed. Simply do it now. Practice that out-breath, do it half a dozen times, and just notice how you feel. And the more you practice it, the more easily you will be able to access it at those crisis points when you're really going to need it. So tomorrow we're going to be talking about number 2 in my first aid response. There's 3 in all, and these are the 3 that I would love everyone to know how to do, because if you can manage your stress in a crisis, then you can access some of the other techniques that are going to make life an awful lot easier. Give it a go and let me know how you get on by putting a comment in the comments box below. I'd love to hear from you. Speak to you soon.
