Licensed clinical social worker Shari B. Kaplan guides a three-cycle breathing exercise that slows your exhale longer than your inhale to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. You visualize the breath traveling down your spine on the inhale and back up on the exhale.
So I think the one thing I teach everybody from day one, like even when I do their biopsychosocial, is I teach people to breathe in through their nose as if it's going into the center of their brain and take it down their spine. Imagine taking it down your spine to your tailbone. When you get to your tailbone, you're exhaling out through your nose again, and you're imagining that breath going all the way up your spine and out the top of your head. So your breath in is shorter than your breath out, obviously, to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. So then I'll do it with them 3 times. And if you want, we can try it. Just breathe in through your nose, send it down your spine to your tailbone. Exhale back up through your spine, through the center of your head, and all the way out the top, top, top, top, top, top, top. And then take your next breath when you're ready. Breathe in, send it all the way down. To your tailbone when you're ready up all the way up, up, up, up, up and out the top of your head. Keep it going. Keep it going. Keep it going. And when you're ready take your third breath in all the way down to your tailbone back up through your spine through the center of your head and all the way off the top.
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