Stress Breathing Techniques - Do NOT Take A Deep Breath - Part 1
Stress Breathing Techniques - Do NOT Take A Deep Breath
PersonalDevelopmentBlog.info
When we begin feeling stressed, we have a tendency to also begin breathing faster and shallowly, which reduces the volume of carbon dioxide in our blood and causes blood vessels to constrict. More often than not, this can lead to hyper-ventilation, which throws our metabolism completely out of whack!
Coaches and athletes understand the need to practice good breathing habits to keep metabolism’s in balance and produce up to 99% of the body’s energy aerobically. Conversely, those of us who have poor breathing habits experience a drop to around 85%, which is a significant decline in aerobic energy production.
The physiological changes caused by poor breathing habits throws off our pH balance, the ratio of O2 to CO2 in the bloodstream, diminished energy and of course a feeling of anxiety or poor health in general. Although we naturally breathe autonomously, over the course of our lifetimes we actually learn to breathe incorrectly. It’s a behavior that can be unlearned given time and effort.
That said, we first need to become aware of our breathing habits, by actually listening to ourselves breathe. We need to time how many breaths we take per minute and if that number is much over 12 in a relaxed state, we need to think about how we can best re-learn to breathe normally.
The first step is to avoid holding the stomach in, preventing the diaphragm from working properly. Relax your stomach muscles and inhale slowly through your nose to a count of 3. Now hold that breathe for a second and then exhale to a count of 6. Repeat that three times and then allow yourself to breath normally. The entire exercise should have taken you 30 seconds.
Stress Breathing Techniques - Do NOT Take A Deep Breath - Part 2
PersonalDevelopmentBlog.info
Filed under: Personal Development News, Stress Management TIps