Anxiety can be a deeply troubling feeling, despite how commonly we experience it. In most cases, anxiety can be a normal sensation, particularly when we have something significant that we’re achieving. However, the effects of long-term chronic anxiety can be debilitating.
In today’s blog, we’ll explore the nature of anxiety and how we can use a specific breathing exercise to help relieve ourselves of anxiety and its debilitating effects.
Read on!
Anxiety & The Body
What we know as the feeling of anxiety can be fundamentally explained as a response from the body to stressful stimuli. This experience comes from our fight-or-flight response and is designed to help us react more quickly and decisively in response to potential danger.
However, there may be times when our sense of anxiety lingers on, even when we have no stressful events to respond to. In these cases, our feelings of anxiety can be a troubling sensation that can negatively affect our lives.
The Panic Button
If you’re feeling a sense of overwhelming anxiety, you may find yourself experiencing a form of hyperventilation as well, where we inhale very rapidly for a length of time as a result of a strongly affected fight-or-flight response.
In moments of intense anxiety, it can be difficult to calm ourselves again. Thankfully, how we breathe in these moments can be a powerful tool to reduce the intensity of the experience.
Our Panic Button exercise is just that, a technique developed to help others find calm when experiencing a storm of anxious feelings and emotions.
How Panic Button Works
The Panic Button exercise uses the power of breathing to calm the body and relieve symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks. It does this by using breath holding to rebalance our oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, which can be severely affected by rapid anxious breathing.
The method for using the Panic Button exercise is as follows:
- Breathing solely through the nose, inhale for four (4) seconds.
- Now exhale through the nose for four (4) seconds.
- Hold the exhale for an additional five (5) seconds.
- Repeat this process for a total of six (6) rounds.
We recommend using this technique for approximately three minutes or more, with brief breaks between completing each set of six rounds.
Briefly holding the exhale for inhaling again can help calm the nervous system and restore a feeling of calm and control. If you are experiencing a panic attack or anxiety attack, then this technique can be a helpful way to diminish the likelihood of hyperventilation.
For more information on managing your breathing for a more effective lifestyle, visit our other blogs ,here at ,The Exhale to get the latest tips and tricks. For free guided breathing exercises that you can take anywhere, try out the Breathwrk app ,here and enjoy a FREE 7-day trial with access to ,everything we have to offer!
And remember: Breathe Better, Live Better.
Ciao!
