Slow Anxiety Breath to Calm your Mind and your Body
When you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, constant worrying, restlessness, irritability, difficulty concentrating functions in your body start to speed up. Your breath speeds up, your heart rate speeds up, your blood pressure speeds up, your thoughts start racing.
 
So in order to calm your mind and calm your body, you slow your breath down and double the length of your exhale. When you breathe in, you activate the sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight, that’s your survival mode. When you exhale, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest, relax, restore, and digest mode. By tuning into your breath, and slowing it down and extending your exhalations, you can really start to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and move into that place of feeling more relaxed, calm, centered and clear. In that state, you make better decisions, you can think clearer, you can sleep better.

It is a very simple technique. You’re going to breathe in always through the nose. And then you’re going to double the length of your exhalation. You can exhale either through your nose or your mouth. You can start out with a two count on the inhale and a four count on the exhale. Do that for a couple of minutes. And then you can play around with other counts. Inhale for four exhale for eight and see what really supports you the best.

You can do it anytime, anywhere. Do two minutes or more of this breathing technique and you’ll find that you feel calmer and more centered and more grounded.