How to Attain Relaxation Through Breathing

    Whenever we feel tense, anxious and sad or in pain, we tend to hold our breath for a few seconds. If the negative feelings linger, we switch to shallow breathing. This is an ancient instinct, which helped our forbears survive in pre-historic times. Today, holding one's breath or shallow breathing has a negative effect on our body and mind. In order to overcome the old instinct, we could breathe deeply a few times, according to the following rhythm:

Stage One: Breathe deeply through your nose, while counting silently from one to three (about 3 seconds). While we are stressed, we tend to exchange only 10% of the air in our lungs. The deep breathing increases the volume of oxygen in the lungs.

Stage Two: Hold your breath, while counting silently from one to three (about 3 seconds). By doing it, we absorb the oxygen thoroughly.

Stage Three: Breathe out through your mouth, while counting silently from one to six (about 6 seconds). We should exhale very slowly all the air from our lungs. When we are stressed, the volume of air used in our lungs is about 90%. By exhaling all the used air, our body absorbs more oxygen and can relax. While exhaling slowly, we can imagine that our body is sinking down into the chair, or even melting down. Our limbs may feel somewhat heavier and the sense of relaxation may spread all over our body.

Stage Four: Hold your breath, until the next breath, while counting silently from one to three (about 3 seconds). Holding your breath, helps overcome hyperventilation

    It is important that you do the Relaxation Through Breathing Technique in a very delicate way, so that no one will notice you are breathing differently than usual. It is recommended that you practice a few times in front of a mirror.

    People asked me, how many times they should repeat the Relaxation Through Breathing technique. My answer is, until you feel that you succeeded in controlling you stress symptoms or, as many times as you wish. In some instances, one time is enough and in other instances until you fall asleep. The Relaxation Through Breathing technique helps people to overcome symptoms such as: heart palpitations, shortness of breath, hyper-ventilation, irritability, excessive worry, intrusive thoughts, difficulties in concentration and difficulties falling asleep.