Breathe to de-stress

If you’re looking for a free and simple way to calm your emotions, look no further than your breathing. Awareness of breathing is of course a key part of mindfulness practice but many people who never think of mindfulness use breathing for relaxation and for de-stressing.

Calming stress

Slow breathing, in particular, is a key to cultivating calm. When you breathe slowly, if you’re feeling stressed, or tense, that slow breathing switches on the calming part of your nervous system (called the para sympathetic nervous system). Could it be simpler than that?

Longer out breath

One way to breathe slowly is to take a longer out breath than in breath.

Do that now - one in breath through your nose, with a longer out breath.

Belly breathing

If you do that for a few minutes, you will feel yourself becoming calmer than you were when you started. It also helps if you do ‘diaphragmatic’ breathing, which could be called belly breathing. So you’re breathing through your nose, allowing your belly to expand while you breathe in and to settle back while you breathe out.

The key point is that even if you’re feeling quite wound up and stressed, if you make a space to do that slow breathing (perhaps building a mindfulness relaxation breathing space into your weekend?), you will begin to de-stress and to calm down your nervous system.

Mindfulness emphasises the importance of breathing – take a look at my Easy Mindfulness online course which has 15 lessons you can do whenever you like.