In today’s highly competitive scenario, stress and anxiety have become a way of life for most of the people. Sometimes, the situation goes beyond our control causing severe stress. While being under stress, negativity surrounds us in thoughts, in mind and in our all the activities. We go back to the past in our thought process and keep worrying about the future. Under such a situation, practising breathing exercises are the best tools to handle your mental state.
Under such a mental state of mind, we must try to follow some tips that help in reducing stress and anxiety and also teach us how to handle such a situation effectively. By the grace of Great God, we all have been blessed with all the time available and totally free of cost tool which works as the major key in managing the stress and anxiety. This tool is none other than our own breath. Just try it out once- take a deep breath in and then leave it out. Follow this practice a few times and we can feel the difference in our energy and relaxation level.
As a matter of fact, our breath is the most effective and powerful tool to ease our anxiety level. To be more precise, breathtaking practice is one of the best ways to get close, to be in perfect touch with our body and mind. Undoubtedly, breathing is a natural phenomenon of a human body. Still, the art of breathing is not less than a perfect skill that needs to be sharpened and practised. There is a lot of difference between taking a normal breath and conscious breath. Obviously, conscious breath helps in restoring the comfort level of the body and also in releasing the negative energies stored in the body. Stored up energy leads to muscle tension and cause so many health problems. Furthermore, conscious breathing practice helps in increasing the flow of oxygen in the body.
If we follow and practice some simple breathing exercises, it may considerably reduce our anxiety level on a day to day basis. We must take care of a few points as noted below before taking breathing exercises.
For breathing exercises, we should choose a right place first of all. It could be any calm place including your bedroom, living room or even a comfortable chair. We should ensure to be comfortable in that space and we should not have a feeling as if we are forcibly sitting in that place. Besides, all these things, we should ensure to put on comfortable clothes while taking breathing exercises. These exercises should be carried out once or twice a day at the same time. Most of the breathing exercises are taken within a few minutes only.
BREATHING EXERCISES TO REDUCE STRESS AND ANXIETY:
Some of the vital breathing exercises are given below. These all are proven methods to ease stress and anxiety and feel less stressed out.
DEEP BREATHING:
Usually, we don’t know how to breathe healthily and we keep taking the short and shallow breaths into the chest. This technique helps in learning the better and bigger breaths.
Feel relaxed. Just lie down on floor straight and place a pillow under the knees and head.
- Fill the belly with air and breathe in deeply and breathe out through the nose.
- Place your hands on belly and chest.
- The sign of right kind of breathing indicates when you feel the rise in the belly while breathing in and feel the belly going on the lower side. Take three full deep breathes and anxiety seems to be eased out internally.
FOCUSSING THE BREATH:
At the time of deep breathing, just imagine some picture, some word, some phrase or something else and focus on that imagination. This would let u feel relaxed to an extent. Here is the technique to focus the breath.
- Close the eyes and breathe big and deep.
- While carrying out this practice, feel as if calmness and peace are prevailing in the environment.
- Now breathe out with the feeling that the air that you are breathing out is taking away and stress.
- Imagine any word in mind while taking a deep breath and feel as if you are breathing in Peace and Calm. Simultaneously. Leave the breath out and feel as if you are breathing out anxiety and stress.
- Imagine any word in mind while taking a deep breath and feel as if you are breathing in Peace and Calm. Simultaneously, leave the breath out and feel as if you are breathing out anxiety and stress. Continue this for 10-20 times and you shall feel amazingly relaxed.
Time Management in Breathing:
Time Management plays a vital role in the success of anybody. Even in breathing practice, time management helps in reducing anxiety and stress. This exercise considers how long you breathe in and how long you breathe out. Breathing in and breathing out needs to be monitored and matched. Please follow the process of this exercise as noted below.
- Sit in the relaxed position.
- Start breathing through the nose until five counts.
- Same way, breathe out through the nose and count to five. Repeat this exercise so many times. Increase the numbers of count till the time you feel comfortable.
Muscle Relaxation:
This is another effective technique to reduce anxiety and stress. As per this technique, just breathe in as you tense a muscle group and breath out as you release out the muscle. As a matter of fact, progressive muscle relaxation helps in bringing physical and mental relaxation.
Lion’s breath:
While practising this technique, the motivation level, the energy level enhances in a miraculous way and anxiety, as well as stress, eradicates and comes down to zero level. In this technique of breathing, just feel as if you are a lion and breathe like a lion with the big and open mouth.
- Sit in a comfortable position.
- Fill the belly full with air through the nose.
- When the breathing capacity is through, fully open the mouth widely as much as you can and then breathe out.
- Repeat this time and again and wonderful results would be there.
CONCLUSION:
This has become a proven fact that the proper and right breathing helps in easing the stress-related disorders such as depression, anxiety, general stress etc. As the leading author, Donna Farhi has written in his one of the renowned books,
“Breathing is one of the simplest things in the world. We breathe in, we breathe out. When we breathe with real freedom, we neither grasp for nor hold on to the breath. … The process of breathing is the most accurate metaphor we have for the way that we personally approach life, how we live our lives and how we react to the inevitable changes that life brings us.”
If you are truly concerned about your health and want to keep motivated and keep away from anxiety and stress, hopefully, the above blog would help you in this considerably. You may attend Yoga and Meditation Classes while sitting at home through Qriyo. Indeed, Qriyo is a single window destination for your learning needs in various fields including yoga and meditation. Get in touch with Qriyo via their website or app and learn the best techniques for reducing stress and anxiety.
