One of the greatest tools we have with us at all times to calm anxiety quickly is our breath. As I mentioned in a previous post, in moments of anxiety or tension, we often forget to breathe. This is very counterintuitive, but the good news is that part of the solution when we feel stressed or anxious lies in simply remembering to breathe! And by that I mean intentionally bringing your awareness to your breath and using one of the anxiety breathing techniques that I will outline below. But first, let’s look at a little bit of science to help explain why this simple tip can be so beneficial!
How the Body Handles Stress
Our bodies have something called the autonomic nervous system which helps to regulate and control the way we respond to the world automatically. A key function of the autonomic nervous system is to keep us safe and it has three primary states to do that. At the risk of oversimplifying things, let’s look at two of these states and how they help the body to handle stress.
The first is called the sympathetic state, which can be referred to as the “fight or flight” system because this is what kicks in when you are in immediate danger. Its job is to shut down non-essential body functions and send that energy to things such as your heartrate, breathing and muscles to better prepare you to run away from or fight a bear, for example. This is why you might notice your heart beating faster and your breath becoming shorter and shallower when you are feeling anxious.
The second is called the parasympathetic-ventral vagal state, which we can also call the “rest and digest” system. This is the system that kicks in once we are away from danger and able to calm down and relax again. When you are back in rest and digest, you might notice that your heartbeat and breathing both slow down, your body becomes less tense and you are better able to digest food.
But What Does This Have to Do with Breathing?
The thing about the autonomic nervous system is that it reacts to stress very similarly to how it would react to a wild tiger suddenly materializing in your room. It’s a little overdramatic that way. The good news is, once we understand what is happening in our body when we are feeling anxious, we can use specific anxiety relaxation techniques to help get us out of the stress response.
Many of these techniques involve the breath. Remember how I said breathing speeds up when we are in fight or flight mode and slows down when we are in rest and digest? Well if you are wondering how to calm anxiety quickly, know that you can actually hack your system to kickstart this process faster! By purposely noticing and slowing down your breath, it sends a signal to your nervous system and brain that it is safe to calm down, and the body responds accordingly.
Below I’ve outlined several anxiety breathing techniques to help you slow down and feel more grounded. Give some of them a try and see if you can notice a difference in how you are feeling!
5 Anxiety Breathing Exercises to Help You Feel More Calm
Anxiety Breathing Technique #1: Notice Your Breath
This breath exercise is really easy – it simply involves noticing your breath without trying to change it. That’s it! Focus on your breathing for a few breath cycles, taking a moment to notice if your breath feels fast, slow, shallow, deep, etc. etc. Notice how the breath feels as it enters your nose and travels down through your throat and into your chest and belly, and if it feels any different as it travels back up and out through your nose or mouth.
If you struggle to guide yourself through this process, here’s a short mindful breathing meditation on Youtube that I really like!
Anxiety Breathing Technique #2: Breathe from Your Diaphragm
Often, when we are stressed, our breathing is shallow and we are breathing from our chest. In theory, this would make sense since this is where our lungs are, but to activate our rest and digest system, we want to focus on breathing from our diaphragm. An easy way to do this is to place one hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Then, see if you can breathe in a way that causes the hand on your belly to rise and the hand on your chest to stay relatively still.
If you are struggling with this anxiety breathing exercise, here are some quick tips that make it super easy to breathe from your diaphragm. The first is to simply lie down while you practice this technique, as we tend to breathe from our belly naturally when we are lying down. The second is to pop a squat (sorry thigh muscles!) while trying this exercise, as this is another way to ensure we are breathing from our diaphragm instead of our chest.
Anxiety Breathing Technique #3: Count Your Breaths
If you find you are too distracted to simply notice your breath, intentionally counting your breath can be helpful. My apologies if you weren’t expecting these anxiety relaxation techniques to invovle math – I promise there’s no complex equations involved! The goal here is simply to breathe in for a set number of beats, hold for a set number of beats and breathe out for a set number of beats. Ideally, you are breathing out for longer than you are breathing in, as this helps to activate our rest and digest system. Here are a couple of my favourites:
4-4-6:
I like to use this one when I am feeling particularly anxious. Simply breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 4 seconds and breathe out for 6 seconds. Rinse and repeat.
4-7-8:
This one is my favourite for when I am trying to settle down into sleep, but it can also be helpful when you are heading into an anxiety-provoking situation. You breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds and breathe out through your mouth for 8 seconds. Do this at least a few times in a row. And if you can’t hold your breath or breathe our for this long, adjust the numbers! The main priority is to slow down and elongate the breath, in whichever way feels most comfortable for you.
Anxiety Breathing Technique #4: Trace Your Breath
Another tool that can help you to focus on the breath is tracing a real or figurative shape and matching your breath to these shapes. For example, you could draw a square on a piece of paper and trace it with your finger (or simply trace the shape in the air), breathing in as you travel up one side, holding while you trace the second side, breathing out as you trace down the next side and holding again as you trace the final side. If the holds feel too long, you could use a rectangle and hold your breath on the shorter sides. If you aren’t a fan of holding your breath for longer than a natural pause, you could try tracing a figure eight, where you switch between breathing in and breathing out when you hit the point where the line crosses back over itself.
Anxiety Breathing Technique #5: Draw Your Breath
Finally, if you want to get even more hands on, you could grab a pen and some paper and draw your breath. One way to do this is to draw circles as you breathe, closing the circle as you finish your out breath. Or else you could track the length of your inhales and exhales with lines, drawing an upwards line as you inhale then a downwards line as you exhale (it should look a bit like a wonky heart monitor). This exercise is great because it gives you a visual representation of your breath and allows you to see how your breath changes the longer you focus on it.
CONCLUSION
There you have it, some of my favourite ways to calm anxiety quickly using the breath. Let me know which one of these breathing exercises is your favourite in the comments below!
