Week Eighteen: Reducing Anxiety with Breathing

I was talking with someone the other day about how to ease their anxiety with a kind of breathing that can make a big difference in just a few minutes. It’s based on a yogic form of breathing, and is used by a lot of people who work with anxiety reduction. It’s based on the idea that when we’re anxious it seems that we tend to have too much carbon dioxide in our bodies. By breathing out to a longer count than we use when we breathe in, we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in our bodies, which helps us to shift from anxiety to increased comfort.

To do this exercise, settle in and allow yourself to become aware of your breathing. There’s nothing else to do – just settle in and become aware. Sometimes, just becoming aware of the breath can increase a sense of anxiety and, if that happens, just allow yourself to notice it without setting up any kind of struggle or judgment. This is an experiment, and you’re just going to see what happens when you practice the following breathing exercise.

If it’s okay for to do so, settle into your belly if you can. If you find that you tend to breathe up in the top of your chest, imagine that there is a heavy book resting on your belly and notice what happens if you breathe so that the book goes up and down with the in-breath and out-breath. In fact, if you have a book on hand, you might rest it on your belly as you begin the exercise, just to practice what it’s like to breathe from deeper down in your body than you usually do.

Then, once you feel settled enough, breathe in to a count of four (4) and breathe out to a count of eight (8). That’s all there is to it. Breathe in to a count of four and out to a count of eight. Do this gently and easily – there’s no effort or struggle here. Do the breathing exercises five to 10 times and see how you feel. Notice what happens when you do the counting slowly and when you do it more quickly. Discover what rhythm is most comfortable for you at any given time.

Be sure to allow yourself simply to be curious and to allow the process to be easy, free from struggle or strain. Simply notice whatever responses you have to the exercise and, if you find it useful, allow yourself to remember that you carry the breath with you wherever you go, so you can practice four in/eight out whenever and wherever you choose.

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