Breathing Exercises To Ward-Off Anxiety Instantly

Anxiety can be hard to deal with. At times, you may feel short of breath, your heart thumps without a practical reason. This happens when you are unable to control your anxiety at the moment. You may feel helpless at such situations. To fight such conditions you need some simple methods which you can practice anytime and anywhere. Don't worry, here are some simple breathing exercise and techniques you can practice to calm and cool down yourself instantly. These breathing exercises can eliminate the symptoms of anxiety and give instant relief to control the situation.

Breathing exercise to fight anxiety

1. Abdomen breathing

If you'd like to learn about abdominal breathing, it is breathing through your diaphragm. The technique of this is:

1. Sit in a comfortable position or relax with your head down. Support yourself with a pillow behind your neck and head if lying down.
2. Place one of your hands on your chest and the other on your stomach.
3. Breathe in and feel your diaphragm expanding while breathing out.
4. Do this for 10-12 minutes a day, with deep and slow breathing.

This type of breathing helps in reducing your blood pressure and gradually slows down the heart rate.

Also read: 7 Habits That Can Worsen Your Anxiety

2. Focus on the breath

This technique can also be compared to deep breathing. To practice this, you ought to inhale deeply and hold your breath for fractions of seconds. While exhaling, feel your breath releasing out. This type of breathing is very helpful in healing anxiety-related symptoms as it helps to regulate the intensity of air in your body.

3. Muscle relaxation sequential breathing

Another technique of breathing efficiently is to practice progressive relaxation breathing. In this, you tend to create tension in the muscles following the relaxation step.

For this, putting on loose clothing is desired. You need to warm up yourself by practicing normal as well as deep breathing simultaneously for a few minutes and then begin with the process of progressive relaxation.

1. Close your eyes and start to build tension in a single part of your body like arms, toes, feet or fingers as you inhale.
2. Hold your breath for 3-5 seconds and then release the tension from that segment by the process of exhalation.
3. Follow this technique throughout for each part of the body as much as you can until you start feeling a little dizzy.

This way helps in creating tension and releasing the tension from your body as well as your mind to relieve yourself from stress.

Also read: Suffering From Depression, Anxiety? Drink This For Some Relief!

4. Equal breathing

When you find hard to sleep due to anxiety, this method can come to your rescue. Also known as "Sama vriti", which means you're taking in the same amount of air as you are releasing out. This helps in balancing the oxygen and carbon-dioxide levels in your body accurately. To practise this technique-

1. Close your eyes and inhale the air in the counts of 4-6
2. Exhale out in the same counts of 4-6
3. Practice this for about 10-12 minutes daily

Also read: Anxiety: 6 Ways To Support Your Dearest With Anxiety

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