Niraj Naik teaches breathing techniques to calm anxiety: breathe through your nose into your diaphragm, make your exhale longer than your inhale (roughly 1-2 beats in, 4-8 beats out), and optionally hold for 10-20 seconds. Pair the rhythm with affirmations like inhaling "I am" and exhaling "Calm."
Questions this video answers
Inhale for about 1–2 beats; exhale for about 4–8 beats.
About 10–20 seconds.
Chapters
So when you're feeling anxious, you might start to hyperventilate and breathe through your mouth like this.
Into your chest. Now, this is stressful breathing, and it's just gonna make it even worse. So what you want to do is first take control of your breath, observe your breathing, and breathe in through your nose and into the diaphragm. So the hand on your diaphragm will rise first.
Like that. And what you want to do is to actually reduce the volume of air. You breathe in slowly and ensuring that you're breathing through your diaphragm. And then start extending your exhalation like this. So let's say you're in an anxious state and you're breathing quite hard into your chest.
Observe, take the breath.
Start extending your exhale.
And then slowly start to reduce the amount of air that you're breathing in by having a slight inhale through your nose and then a longer exhale.
So it's like you're breathing in for one or two beats and out for four to eight beats, continuously extending your exhale so you start to feel nice and calm and relaxed. And what you can also do at the end of the rhythmic breathing is to just hold your breath for a few seconds, like 10, 20 seconds, like this.
Holding your breath.
And just holding your breath and relaxing for 10, 20 seconds, every muscle in your body. And what you'll notice is that the stress response switches off, the anxiety starts to fade away, and then you can check in with the anxiety and the source of it, whether the anxiety is rational or irrational. Meaning what you need to do is assess in your mind is the anxiety that you're feeling something that really is a threat to your life. So maybe you've seen a spider and it's made you panic. Maybe you're about to go on stage in front of lots of people and the anxiety and panic starts to build up. But you know that in these situations that venial anxiety is irrational. You're not going to die, you're perfectly safe. So you can actually start to visualize in your mind and tell yourself that actually everything's safe, everything is well. You can add an affirmation to your breath, like this, breathing in, saying, I am, and then on the exhale saying, come.
I am.
Calm.
That extra bit of humming on the mmm in calm also will help you relax and calm down, too. So when you actually become more aware of what's rational and irrational just by realizing that actually you're completely safe, that can completely stop that feeling of anxiety and panic. However, if it's a rational fear, something that you really urgently have to do, such as file your taxes or complete a deadline for your boss, or something that you urgently have to submit before a certain date or time, then this just is a sign that you actually need to get this thing done. With rational fear, this mechanism we have to create adrenaline and feel stress and anxiety is there for a reason. It's there to actually help you as an alert to get that thing done. So don't put it off, otherwise you're going to get more anxious. However, if it's irrational, you can slowly program your mind using this technique to actually not feel that same fear in that situation. So I hope this helped Peace.
