Instead of yelling, slamming doors, or focusing on smoking, take a slow deep breath in through your nose to the slow count of five. Push your belly out at the same time; this makes the air go deeply into your lungs. Slowly breathe out through your mouth to the count of seven. Repeat this 3 times as you feel yourself relaxing and the stress dropping away.
Normally when we think about breathing, we think of it as having two parts: breathing in and breathing out. Not any more. We want you to think about breathing as having four parts, like a square or a box. Breathing in and breathing out are two sides of the box, but there are two more sides. It’s the two other sides that we want you to focus on.
If you pay attention to your breathing, you’ll notice it has four parts. We breathe in and we breathe out (sides 1 and 3), but we also actually pause twice with each cycle. We pause once after we breathe in, and once after we breathe out. So, our breathing really goes like this, breathe in on one, pause on two, breathe out on three, pause on four, breathe in on one, pause on two, breathe out on three, pause…
Sometimes it’s easier to notice the pauses. When we’re very relaxed the pauses are easy to spot. When we’re exercising or panicking, the pauses are harder to spot. But, they’re always there, no matter what. You can’t get rid of the pauses!
Where could you use this breathing technique to help you cope?
Ashley, Health Educator
