A Breath Practice for Overwhelm

Has anyone ever told you to “calm down” when you are in the middle of a stressful situation?  Yup , never works.

One of my favorite quotes is “ Never in the world of calming down, has anyone calmed down, when being told to calm down” - unknown

That’s sooo true!!

So what can we do when we feel our heart start to beat faster, face warm up, tightness in our fists, chest, face, stomach, and our mind starts swirling?

We can find our breath.

Yes, you heard me, find our breath.  Did we lose it? No, not really. However, we do tend to take it for granted and not pay attention to it.

The magic of the breath is that once we do pay attention to it, things start to shift!

You see, different emotions are associated with different forms of breathing, so changing our breath can literally change how we feel.

When we change the rhythm of our breath, elongate the exhale, we are signaling relaxation.  We are waking up the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest system.

A favorite of mine is the 4,7,8 breath.

Breathe in for 4

Hold for 7

Exhale for 8

Repeat for 5 rounds