How Can Breathing Help You Ground?

So if you want to ground or calm yourself, what's another technique you can use? We recommend breathing.

Breathing.

This is Rick Wilks from Thriving now, and I'm Kathy Bartulli from ThrivingNow and.

The intimacydosha.com youm've probably heard that deep breathing helps. And yet our natural reaction when we're triggered or activated is to breathe way up in our chest or kind of.

Hold our breath a little bit.

Yeah, that freeze response and noticing where your breathing is and getting that to be your habit can help you start the grounding process. Anytime we have a habit of noticing something that's going on in our body at times when we're activated, it starts that signal to the primitive brain. Hey, there's not actually a saber toothed tiger here. It's okay for us to breathe. We're not about to be eaten.

There's actually a biofeedback loop that goes on. So our brain may think, oh my God, this is stressful. It sends signals to our bodies. We tend to get tense. We breathe more shallow, more shallow, more fast. But if we consciously say, okay, I'm taking a deep, slow breath, that sends a signal to the brain that, hey, maybe things aren't as scary because literally, if a bear is about to eat you or a saber toothed tiger, you're not going to take a slow, calm, deep breath. I don't know anyone that would be that calm about it.

No, it's time to get out of the way. And so this, this continues our process of really tuning into how to ground and center yourself energetically and emotions or energy. So anytime you're feeling aroused emotionally, let's, let's just start with that. What would you like? For me? I. Placing my hand on my. Over the collarbone points that we use in tapping. And if you're in a place where you can tap, that's fine. But if you're not even just. And it doesn't have to look weak, it doesn't have to be, that's fine too. But if you're in a place where you can apply some pressure, some comforting pressure, and then just follow the breath in. And if you're in a place where you can make some noise. Want to do that?

Yeah. What actually happens is when you make noise, when you breathe and you breathe, you stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps get one in your body, but it deactivates some of the primitive brain response. So you just take a nice slow, deep breath in. And when you exhale, you, you may not want to do this in the Middle of a meeting, or maybe even in the bathroom if there are other people there. But if you're in the car, I've done this a lot in the car. Or if I have an office door that closes or there's no one else in the restroom, I will just take some slow, deep breaths. And I recommend if you can train yourself that if you're activated. And again, the more you practice these things, the stronger it gets. If you're activated, take three slow, deep breaths before you act. If you have the, you know the building's on fire, don't stop. But. So take another slow, deep breath with us right now and notice how it feels. And Rick has an amazing tapping that he guides people through called anxiety constricted breathing. And the link is below if you want to check that out, because it just gently walks you through getting present with your breath. And I recommend it highly to people. We have a lot of clients that if they're going through a hard time, they'll do it two, three times a day. They'll just hit play on that and listen to the audio and guide themselves through the process.

A little tip. As you're breathing, if you want to use, if your mind's really active, tell it to notice the end of the inhale and the end of the exhale. There's a still point at those points, so just do that. And that also gives your brain something to notice.

Yeah, our brains like to be very active if they can.

And I want to say this, a lot of times people who are anxious, they notice their breathing and they feel like there's something wrong with them. This is really normal. We're designed to breathe differently in states of activation or being triggered. The good news is that our breathing is something that we do have conscious control over. And I would have said I've heard that before, but I never used to do it. When I started to really pay attention to that as an indicator of my stress level, it allowed me to be more aware of how my body was rising in tension level. Because once you're really your breathing is way up in your throat, it's harder to relax it down. So another technique is every 20 minutes to an hour, or every time you're taking a switch from one mode to another, like going from your desk to a meeting, or going from working in the kitchen to preparing some plans, just take a moment and tune into your breathing. The collarbone points here are also really good. For me tapping on my collarbone points, which are attached to the adrenal glands and the meridian system. You'll notice that I'm drumming pretty good. Because if I'm sort of anxious and aroused, drumming and then quieting and then take a breath that feels like a little frustration, and then taking a breath that feels like returning to peace.

So slowly stepping yourself through that, stepping.

Yourself down, you can't always jump from ba to peaceful. And that's okay, too. We weren't designed to always make that leap. But the good news is that when we practice this, what might take you a couple of hours for some people to really step themselves down can be something that you can do in a breath or two. Wouldn't that be awesome to have that kind of savvy with your emotional energy? That's what we love helping people with. So if there's some way that I.

Wanted to add something to that.

Sure.

I think that a lot of times we tend to think that whatever reaction our body has is true. And our body does have, it does tell the truth. But if our brain is very activated, we may be feeling fear that's not related to here and now. And if our breath is fast and we think that's true, we tend to feed that back and it's a spiral. We just keep activating our brain. Our body gets more scared. We think that's true, that there's some real danger, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. So if you can take slow, gentle breaths, I love to notice a difference in the temperature between the inhale and the exhale. Gives my brain something to do, and that can help you calm down so quickly because you're having direct access to the primitive brain's input, and that's so powerful. So if you're feeling stressed or not grounded, not in your body, breath is a beautiful way to do that. So we'd love to hear what your thoughts are, what helps you ground. Leave comments below.