Dr. Don WoodResolving Your Trauma-Based Challenges So You Can Unlock Peak Performance

How to lower your anxiety with something you're already doing

14 Mar 2020 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:21

A short YouTube video (March 14, 2020) by Dr. Don Wood of the Inspired Performance Institute giving practical advice to reduce anxiety and panic related to coronavirus news. He explains a brief physiological feedback loop—hyperventilation/CO2 and pH changes amplifying perceived threat—and recommends diaphragmatic (belly) deep breathing as a simple, repeatable way to calm the nervous system; he advises practicing the breathing routinely so it can be used when anxiety arises.

Chapters

Hi, it's Dr. Don Wood from the Inspired Performance Institute. If you suffer from panic or anxiety, the news about this coronavirus is not really good news for your nervous system. So if you are experiencing any of the anxiety, even getting into panic, the key is to be able to calm down your system. Your mind is actually cycling and going through a whole bunch of information which is then changing your physiologically in your body. And then your body is sending messages to your brain that it's running short on oxygen, changing CO2, the pH of the blood starts to change, and then that just continues to exaggerate the threat. So the key is to start deep breathing, breathing from your belly, take a nice deep breaths, because the more oxygen you can get into your system, the safer your mind is going to feel. It's not going to be getting these mixed messages from your body that we're running out of oxygen. CO2 is building, pH is changing. So relax, do some deep breathing. Practice the deep breathing even if you're not experiencing anxiety and panic attacks, so that if you do feel one coming on, you can start this breathing exercise. And so practice that breathing. It's really, really a key to start calming stuff down and stop your mind from continuing to cycle through these potential threats that probably don't even exist. All right, take care.