Tag Archives: breathing techniques

Sing Your Way to Calm

Anyone who has suffered from debilitating anxiety will know that correct breathing is one of the principal weapons against anxiety and panic attacks. There are countless references to the importance of breathing correctly in many schools of relaxation therapy, including yoga. While all of these methods are excellent and should be pursued, it can take a considerable length of time to make correct breathing your everyday style. Patterns of quick, shallow breathing which promote anxiety due to the changing oxygen/carbon dioxide ratio in the blood, are often firmly entrenched. It can take a lot of conscious effort to make correct, … Continue reading →

Learning to relax (2)

Correct breathing is an essential part of learning to relax, so today we’ll look at how to recapture the way we all used to breathe as a matter of habit. Breathing plays a large part in the ability to relax because breathing has a psychological as well as a physiological effect on the body. Just as thoughts can change breathing patterns, so too can the way we breathe affect the way we think. Slow breathing promotes calm. Rapid breathing encourages overstimulation of the nervous system. Proper breathing can lower the metabolic rate and make us feel more relaxed. The slower … Continue reading →

Learning to relax (1)

Continually stressed to the max? Do you have days when you want the world to just stop? Perhaps learning to relax should be on your agenda: here are some helpful tips on getting back into your comfort zone. The first thing to remember is that we all know how to relax. We really don’t have to learn how to relax because we are born experts on relaxation. Watch any baby or toddler: these guys have a PhD in chilling out. We, too, once possessed that skill but somewhere along the line, we unlearned it. We may be old dogs now, … Continue reading →