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| (Photo from ehow.co.uk) |
How do you breathe when you're at peace? when you're happy? when you're satisfied? when you're relaxed? How do you breathe when you're at rage? when you're upset? when your scared? when you're threatened? How do you breathe when you're at your best? How do you breathe when you're at your worst?
These are important questions about yourself that you should answer (and later on monitor) before moving forward. The first technique we're going to learn in managing stress demands that you reminisce your experience of breathing.
Common responses
In response to the given questions, some people I worked with would answer as follow:
When I'm at peace (satisfied, relaxed, comfortable), I breathe...slowly, savouring the air that comes into my nostrils, filling my lungs with air without straining myself, not rushing to blow the air out when it's in then, with the same steady pace, breathe the air out of my mouth again without straining myself in doing so.
When I'm stressed (excited, upset, scared, threatened), I breathe...forcibly, trying to draw as much air inside my lungs as I can (sometimes hurting my shoulder muscles in the process), gasping for air through my mouth until I've filled my chest fully, then, throwing out the air out of my mouth...often the breathing cycle goes rapidly and strained.
If you've answered the same way, then you have religiously explored your own experience of breathing and have gained insight about the process.
Understanding the logic behind controlled breathing
As you've probably realized now after reflecting, a breathing pattern is associated with specific emotions or feelings.
When we experience stressful and negative feelings, we tend to strain our breathing. Our body naturally supports this by producing hormones and neurotransmitters that tune us up to respond (fight vs. flight) accordingly to a negative situation.
Our muscles tighten, our heart beats faster, we breathe faster and mindlessly, we feel more fear/anger/frustration and, again there's an ongoing cycle. This series of processes initiates a positive feedback loop wherein the body produces even more hormone and neurotransmitter that even more aggravates the magnitude of stress we are experiencing.
This loop has to stop!
Either we cut out the stimuli (i.e., stressful situation or the emotion or feelings) that elicit the loop or we stop the body from responding to these stimuli. If we are able to do any of these two, then we are little by little pacifying the rabid interaction between the stressed body and the stressed mind. Between the two, the latter is somewhat easier to do.
This is the logic of controlled breathing. We control how we breathe, we manage how we feel.
You are now ready
With all these understanding, you are now ready to perform the actual controlled breathing exercise.
