Breathing Exercise To Lower Stress

Continuing with stress relief, let’s get onto eliminating a stressor.

Wrong muscles used and overworked cause chronic stress.  The little aches and pains in the shoulder, base of your neck as well as base of your skull.  Those small muscles were never meant to do so much work.

Full deep breaths should be 2/3 in lower belly, 1/3 in lungs.  In reality, it all goes in your lungs, it just feels as if you were breathing into your lower belly or upper chest.

The easiest way to practice is to:

– Lie on your back, knees bent, one hand on your tummy
– Fill up your stomach first, feel it rising up
– push the air down as far as possible
– Exhale ALL the air as you feel your tummy go down

Practice this for 3 days, best time is at the end of your day in bed, just before you fall asleep.  It helps wind you down.

On Day 4, at the end of each of your inhale to your belly, begin increasing the air intake into your upper chest.  You’ll notice you can take in quite a bit more air with just one deep breath.

Remember children breathing before they’re self conscious.  All the air goes into their belly.

What if I have trouble with breathing into my belly?  It’s impossible.

It is definitely frustrating in the beginning to overcome the millions of breaths you’ve taken the “wrong way”.  If you persist and continue practicing, you will make it through.  You’ll notice you’ll be a lot more patient the deeper you’re able to breathe.

One thing to be mindful of is if you take in more air than you usually do, you may get light headed but the additional oxygen.  This is a good thing, you just need to work up to it slowly.

Go ahead and give this a try for the next week and comment below this post on what improvements you notice, if any.