Now that we have techniques to identify your stress and the causes of it, it’s time to do something about it. One simple way is to take control of your breathing. When you next feel stressed, take a minute to notice the way you breathe. Are you taking long, slow, deep breaths? Probably not, as when we become stressed we start to gasp in shallow, rapid breaths without even realising it. Unfortunately, hypopnea, as it’s known in medical circles, will only increase your feelings of stress as it can lead to tightness in the chest, pins and needles in the hands and feet, butterflies and, in the worst cases, confusion and panic.
Know the feeling? I’m sure you do, as we’ve all experienced this at some time or another.
The problem is that feeling this way makes you want to end the situation as soon as possible and often forces people to make rash decisions. As you can imagine, this is not a good situation, especially if the decisions you are making are important for your business or personal life.
So what do you do to stop this?
Simple – learn how to breathe deeply and calmly. When you find yourself becoming stressed and panicky, take five minutes out. Sit, or if you can, lie down, close your eyes and breathe in deeply through your nose and out through your mouth. Make sure you breathe deeply, using your diaphragm to pull the air in. If you are not sure whether you are doing this or not, try resting your hands on your belly; when you breathe in your belly should rise and when you breathe out it should fall. If your shoulders are rising up and down as you breathe in and out, you are still shallow breathing. Breathe in and out like this for a couple of minutes and you should feel your stress start to fade, allowing you to regain control and function in a rational way again.
Practice every day
You might find that practising deep breathing for a few minutes each morning helps you remain calm, composed and ready for any stressful situation you might be exposed to during the day. Some people find that visualisation helps and we’ll cover this in more detail in later posts but, for the purpose of this exercise we’ll use blue and green mist. This is because in colour therapy blue can calm distraught nerves and ease mental anguish and green is useful for easing tension and promoting feelings of patience and relaxation.
Follow this deep breathing plan and see how it works for you:
find a quiet place to sit or lie down
close your eyes
start to become aware of your breathing, feel the cool air being drawn into your nostrils and the warm air moving out
now take three deep breaths – breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth
on the in-breath imagine a blue or green mist being sucked into your lungs, feel the calm and peace filling you up as you breathe in
on the out-breath, imagine the stress and anxiety you feel as a black or grey mist leaving your body, taking negative emotions with it
now breathe normally again
repeat the process three times
once you feel calm and relaxed, open your eyes
Now you are ready to take on the world!
Remember, once you get used to breathing and visualising in this way, you can do it anywhere – on the bus, in the library, in a shop queue – so there’s no need to feel overly stressed ever again.
Next week – more stress busting techniques.
