A Simple Breathing Exercise for Stress & Anxiety - SOMA Breath

So simple breathing exercise will help you relieve anxiety and also to de stress. So why do we get anxious? Well, anxiety has many different causes and sometimes the causes are irrational, as in like you may be worried about like a spider that's in your room. Or it could be very rational, as in you have got like looming bills, deadlines to meet, and in that case you really need to solve the problem, the cause of the anxiety, for it to actually really resolve. However, sometimes the physical effects of anxiety can actually cause added stress and actually harm your nervous system and your well being. And it's a good idea to actually minimize this harmful effects anxiety can cause, which is tension, contraction, nervousness, irritability, hypertension, and things that actually are not going to serve our health in the best way. So just having simple breathing exercises can actually be like the off switch for anxiety and the stress response. I'll tell you why. Because in order to get relaxed, to calm anxiety down, you want to switch on the parasympathetic nervous system and calm down the sympathetic, which deals with fight and flight. And actually when you exhale, you actually stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. And when you inhale, you stimulate the sympathetic. So very simply, when we extend our exhalation, we calm the nervous system down. And there's certain ways we can do this. You can either just do very long exhalations, okay? You can even make tones like om o, which you obviously have heard of in yoga. It's a very important chance, very popular, but it's actually just also an extended exhalation. So in order to do that, you can either make a tone or you can even just breathe out like you're breathing out through a small straw. So if you're feeling a bit nervous, you get that contracted feeling in your chest, then what you want to do is just relax in your chair in a comfortable position, keep your back straight, breathe in.

And just.

Breathe out very slowly, like breathing out through a small straw.

And when you exhaled fully, then you breathe in again.

And repeat.

And in your mind you can start saying, I am calm, I am calm. As you are extending your exhalation, you can even go.

In your mind, I am calm. You can even say calm.

As you exhale. And this is just a soothing effect on your nervous system. So try that. Give that a go. Let me know how you how it works for you in the comments. The next step you can do is actually breathe in a rhythm where you're breathing in for a certain number of beats and breathing out for a certain number of beats. And when you double the time that you exhale versus your inhale so you breathe in for two beats out for four. You breathe in for four out for eight. This rhythmic breathing really dramatically affects your nervous system and calms down the sympathetic and activates the parasympathetic and we actually have in our free masterclass a technique that you can test out that shows you how to use the rhythm and gives you a special meditation. Soma breath meditation has become very popular around the world. It incorporates the breath in this rhythmic fashion to create these effects. So if you want to test that out then sign up for the free masterclass on the link below. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and in our YouTube channel we also have relaxation breath meditations that you can do using rhythm and the breath to really calm down your nervous system and to relieve anxiety and to calm the stress. So can't wait to see you in the next video and I'll see you on the inside. Peace.