Breathing Exercises-Helping you to get Relief from Stress and Anxiety

Nervous system of a human body gets activated when it comes under stress. This response enables your body to deal and face short term emergency cases. Performance level would increase manifold as you would become more active than before. The ability to hit harder, run faster and staying awake for a longer period of time would be developed by doing proper breathing exercises. Your body and mind get calm by doing these exercises, resulting in improved health.

It is advisable to do these exercises in case you are stressed or highly anxious as these would prevent a full-blown panic attack. If you are suffering from anxiety and stress, then you may sometimes feel it developing inside. These often comes with signs such as a lump in throat, heart start racing fast, breath becoming shorter or even butterflies in your stomach. You can do following exercises to control the such situations

Activating Diaphragm

• For this exercise you can lie down and then bend your knees in upward position or can sit up with proper support. Ensure that you are using the upper portion of your chest to inhale and without tensing up. Then you should lift shoulders in upward position and bring them down slowly in a relaxed position. Keep on repeating the same process for at least three times.
• After this, you can do diaphragmatic breathing buy placing a hand on your abdomen and the other hand on your chest. If the hand on your abdomen goes down when you exhale and rises up when you inhale, also the hand your chest does not moves at all then your diaphragm is working properly.
• By thinking relaxing or calm thoughts, keep on practicing this exercise for at least 2-3 minutes with relaxed chest, neck and shoulders. The distressing thoughts in your mind can be taken off by doing this breathing exercise.

Holding breath for small durations

• This is done by inhaling and exhaling small breaths through your nose. Hold your breath just after exhaling and count five before gently inhaling again. Just after this you can repeat the

diaphragmatic exercise at least ten times. You can repeat this process of doing both the exercises one by one.

There are three vital points to keep in mind to achieve effective breathing exercise which can help you to overcome the stress and anxiety. These points are as follows

• The nose should be used for inhaling every breath during the exercise. We need to understand that the main function of our nose is breathing therefore it should be used more than breathing from mouth. Though during exercise you can exhale from your mouth as many people find it quite relaxing.
• Secondly, you should calm down and relax fully during the exercise because tense muscles would not let your mind to get complete rest.
• Third point to remember is breath holds as these help carbon dioxide to stay inside your body a bit longer. This might help in restoring and prevention of hyperventilation.

Breathing exercises are easy to learn, but it is advisable to visit a physiotherapy centre to get favourable results. Search online if you are looking for a physio. Crows Nest is the home for some of most renowned physiotherapist.

Anna Jane Physio North Sydney has more than 18 years of experiance as a physiotherapist. She has served as team physio to the Australian Freestyle Ski Team.