Just Breathe … Diaphragmatically – It’s Life Changing
In my opinion, diaphragmatic breathing is the number one, must learn, must-do strategy for dealing with stress and anxiety. Just breathing diaphragmatically is life changing.
Why Is Diaphragmatic Breathing So Powerful For Stress Management?
There are many physiological changes that occur in our bodies when we go into the ‘fight-flight’ or stress response, and most of them occur automatically, completely outside of our conscious control. But breathing is one of the few that we can consciously regulate. We can’t tell our heart-rate to slow down or our blood pressure to reduce (unless we are deeply experienced in self-hypnosis or meditation), but we can choose to change our breathing pattern. And if we can start to breathe as if we are deeply relaxed, this can be like the beginning of a domino effect – it can trigger changes in all the other aspects of our physiology, for example slowing down our heart rate, blood pressure and slowing down our racing mind.
When we are caught in the fight-flight response our breathing is fast and shallow. Why? Because this is the breathing pattern required to get the maximum amount of oxygen into our blood stream to give our arms and legs more power for fighting or running. And the muscles that make this type of breathing happen are our upper chest muscles rather than our diaphragm.
The fight-flight response is controlled through the sympathetic nervous system. To reverse all the changes that occur when we go into the fight-flight response, and move from fight-flight physiology to the preferable ‘relaxed and focussed’ physiology, we need to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. And this is what initiates the ‘domino effect’ resulting in reduced heart-rate, worst-case scenario thinking, panic etc.
Just Take Some Deep Breaths … – Or Not!
Firstly to dispel a very common myth – taking big breaths does not help in calming ourselves down – in fact it can have exactly the opposite effect. Instead we want to take ‘‘lower’ breaths – tummy breaths. So if we think of taking deep breaths as taking big breaths, this is not helpful. However if you think of ‘deep’ as being like ‘deep in the ocean’ or diving your breath deep down, low in your tummy, this is helpful. The aim is to breathe with our diaphragms not with our chest muscles. When we are doing this correctly, when we breathe in, our tummies expand, and when we breathe out our tummies contract.
A good way to tell what is happening with your breathing is to find a way to notice whether your tummy expands when you breathe in. See this youtube link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmi6sNG9ttM) for a simple demonstration of the tummy clearly rising on the in-breath. Another way to observe whether you are getting correct tummy movement is, with very loose arm and shoulder muscles, to very lightly hold your hands on your tummy with your finger-tips just touching when you are at the end of the out breath. When you breathe in you will see your finger-tips part.
I strongly recommend getting some training from a health professional if you have trouble breathing with your diaphragm in this way, or if you find that your tummy sucks in when you breathe in. Some physiotherapists specialize in breathing retraining, and this coaching is a very worthwhile investment. In New Zealand this help may be available free through your local DHB – ask your G.P. for a referral.
Four Key Pointers
To breathe in a way that helps to calm our nervous system and move us out of a sympathetic nervous system dominated physiology there are four main things we are aiming for
1) To breathe with our diaphragms, low in our tummies, as already mentioned
2) To have our exhale being approximately twice as long as our inhale. One way to achieve this is to breathe out through slightly pursed lips, as if we are cooling a cup of coffee – this reduces the gap for the air to escape from our lungs so slows down the exhale. Or we can count, aiming for an exhale approximately twice as long as the inhale. Do not force the breath out. Imagine that you are letting the breath fall out of you, and that it is a real ‘letting go’ kind of breath.
3) We aim to slow down our breathing rate, to 5 or 6 breaths per minute. The chances are, you will slow down your overall breathing rate when you begin to focus on slowing down your exhale. Slowing the exhale tends to lead to a feeling of ‘letting go’’ of stress, and as we start to feel this feeling, we tend to slow down our breathing rate overall. Don’t aim for this breathing rate of 5 -6 breaths per minute first off, just gradually slow your breathing down a little by a little, and it will happen more naturally.
4) It is important to breathe in through your nose. Sensors in our nostrils help to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. Also breathing in through the nose results in filtering and moisturizing the air going into our lungs. If you have a very congested nose, experiment with breathing in with stretched lips (aka a smile). That often seems to open space in spite of the congestion. Unfortunately there is a catch 22 with regard to congestion – the more stressed we are, the more likely we are to suffer from sinus and hayfever and hence be congested. It is important to find a way to break this cycle, and diaphragmatic breathing is an important weapon in your arsenal so don’t give up too easily on the nose breathing challenge.
Proving The Link Between Breathing and The Stress Response
If you have any doubt that breathing style is directly associated with feeling stressed, anxious or panicked, you could prove the link to yourself once and for all by deliberately hyperventilating, and by doing this you will be able to induce a full-blown panic attack. I do not recommend this! However, it is a strategy that is often suggested as part of treatment for Panic Attacks to help patients understand that panic attacks are within their conscious control. In other words, fast, high, shallow breathing is not just a symptom of stress, anxiety and panic attacks. It can also be a cause. This is a vicious cycle that you can learn to interrupt, simply by learning calm, healthy diaphragmatic breathing.
Three Ways To Use Diaphragmatic Breathing
1. As First Aid, or a sticking plaster, to deal with acute symptoms of stress when they arise, or in preparation for a particular stressful event such as a public speaking engagement or a difficult meeting. This would involve spending several minutes deliberately engaging in low, slow diaphragmatic breathing to settle down your nervous system when you are aware that you are experiencing stress symptoms.
2. As a preventive treatment, kind of like taking Vitamin C regularly to prevent getting a cold. This would involve spending 10 – 20 minutes once or twice a day deliberately practicing low, slow diaphragmatic breathing –– in the same way that one might spend 10 – 20 minutes a day meditating to help calm and regulate the nervous system.
When we are in a chronic state of fight-flight physiology, our ‘base-line’ arousal level is likely to creep up and up, over time, bringing with it more severe signs and symptoms of stress. On top of our normal ‘base-line’ of arousal, we also inevitably experience various ‘stress peaks’’ that are a normal part of everyday modern life, whether it is a difficult situation at work, an argument with a partner, an unexpected bill etc. If we start the day from a high base-line of stress, the additional stressors of day can push us into a zone of unhelpful stress, overwhelm or anxiety.
By regularly practicing diaphragmatic breathing we can gradually lower our ‘base-line’ and with it reduce the signs and symptoms of stress.
3. As your default breathing pattern. This is the overall goal. During relatively sedentary activities e.g. desk work, reading, watching T.V., cooking a meal at home, having a conversation with a friend etc. it is ideal to aim for about 12 – 16 breaths per minute. This is faster than what you might aim for when you are practicing diaphragmatic breathing specifically to calm down your nervous system.
So, Remember – Just Breathe
Regularly check-in with yourself. How am I breathing right now? Am I breathing with my chest or diaphragm? Am I breathing in through my nose? Is my out-breath longer than my in-breath. Pause and take a moment to get centred and get breathing … diaphragmatically. The benefits of doing this are immense.
A penny for your thoughts … (not literally, but you know what we mean – we’d love to hear from you):
I’d love to hear your opinion and learn about your experiences: Please add your comment/s below.
Do you have personal experience of the difference that breathing diaphragmatically can make. If so, how did you come to discover this? How and when do you use diaphragmatic breathing? Do you still find you fall back into unhealthy breathing patterns from time-to-time and have to refocus on re-establishing a good diaphragmatic breath pattern? (Confession time – I do.) Do you know of any good youtube clips or web resources on diaphragmatic breathing that others might find helpful – if so, please share.
Any and all comments welcome – whether or not you agree with what I’ve written.
Perhaps you are familiar with that feeling of having too much on your mind, too many balls in the air, and feeling like you have no clarity, no perspective, and no time to think.
Perhaps it’s time for a ‘defrag’ – time to clear you mental ram, to gain some more ‘working memory’.
But I can’t afford the time to stop and clear my mind right now
When we most need to ‘defrag’ we feel least able to step back from our busy lives to regain some perspective. This is perfectly understandable when we think about what happens to our thinking patterns when we are caught up in the stress response or ‘fight-flight’ physiology. If your body is circulating adrenalin and other stress chemicals, your mind goes into the very ancient ‘danger mode’, in the same way it would if you were being pursued by a wild animal in ancient times. And part of that mode is an intense sense of urgency and pressure – which would be very useful to you if you were actually being pursued by a wild animal. So while one part of you has an awareness that you need to step back or take a break, just about every cell in your body is feeling that sense of urgency, and tells you that you can’t afford to stop or slow down – that you have to soldier on.
In addition, many of us have been brought up with a strong work ethic, and when things get tough, we just work harder. When our brain is clogged up, we’re not thinking clearly, we have no sense of perspective, and have difficulty in prioritizing. In this state we are not able to work as efficiently as usual. Working harder in that state is not helpful and is likely to just get us more stressed. In a sense, working harder in this situation is like already being down in a big dark hole, and the only tool we have handy is a spade, so we pick it up and dig like crazy. Not a very clever idea.
What is it that we fill our ram with, to the point that we reach that overload point?
I would suspect that maybe 80% of the space in many people’s minds is filled with mental movies – scenarios that we have created in our heads. These ‘virtual reality movies’ are often of the worst case scenarios we imagine for the future, or movies re-running past disappointments, upsets or guilt. And we tend to play them over and over in our heads. I would suspect that only 20% would be real current problems that we are in the midst of solving. As Mark Twain is quoted as saying “I’ve lived through many troubles in my life, and some of them have actually happened”. There is nothing to be lost and much to be gained by clearing our ram of these unhelpful mental movies.
Mindfulness practices can be very helpful in clearing our mental ram.
1. Regular daily mindfulness meditation allows us to take a break from our mental movies daily, and through doing this practice we get better at not accumulating as much dross during the day. Through our daily meditation practice of ‘just noticing’ and ‘being in the present moment’ we build up our ability to move our attention away from unhelpful mental movies whenever we drift into them.
2. We learn to notice more quickly when we begin to go into our heads and create unhelpful mental movies. This saves us from getting lost in them for as long and reduces the amount of time we spend feeling worried, guilty etc in relation to them.
3. Through our daily mindfulness practice and using everyday mindfulness tools we are strengthening our ‘attention muscle’ and the more helpful neural pathways. And the less time we spend re-running old movies or playing unhelpful future movies, the weaker these unhelpful neural pathways will become.
4. The increased calm or equanimity that we develop through regular mindfulness practice means that we tend to be pulled into less ‘drama’ during our day.
5. As we develop increased compassion for ourselves and others we experience less anger, frustration, resentment etc. which means that we don’t fuel difficulties and challenges and turn them into dramas as much.
The result being that we create a lot more mental space, feel a lot less stressed and can think more clearly.
Resisting the ‘I haven’t got time’ dinosaur brain message
So when the wise part of you is aware that you need to step back, slow down or take a break to get some perspective and clear your mental ram, but the ‘crazy-brain’ is caught up in the fight-flight physiology and tells you that you can’t afford the time, it’s useful to remind yourself
● That’s just ‘crazy-brain’ adrenaline-fuelled thinking – and you are not being pursued by a wild animal
● With a clear mind you can think and work more strategically, make better decisions and less mistakes
● You will be more efficient and enjoy your work more if you clear your ram, refresh yourself and return to your work with a sense of perspective
So although it may feel hard for you to do, stepping back and clearing your ram is definitely worth the effort.
A penny for your thoughts … (not literally, but you know what we mean – we’d love to hear from you)
I’d love to hear your opinion and learn about your experiences: Please add your comment/s below.
Do you find that you get caught up in the ‘I can’t afford to take a break or slow down’ mode? Are there particular ideas or thoughts that get you ‘hooked in’? I know that one of mine is a desire to ‘clear my plate’ before I finish a task, but knowing that I have set myself a challenging (in fact often completely unrealistic) time limit to get things done in.
Or do you have a reluctance to accept anything less than the highest standard so you never have ‘enough time’ to achieve the standard you want?
Or what other thoughts or beliefs trap you into a sense of rushing, urgency or ‘not enough time’?
And if you’ve broken through these traps, what tips can you share with others as to what worked for you. Or books you’ve found helpful that others might enjoy? (I recommend Dr Libby Weaver’s ‘The Rushing Woman’s Syndrome’ – it contains great easy to understand explanations of the physiological (including hormonal), nutritional and lifestyle factors that contribute to women’s stress.
Any and all comments welcome – whether or not you agree with what I’ve written.
You might think that the more you hate the way you are, the quicker and easier it will be to change. Not so. The more we disapprove of ourselves and beat ourselves up, the less motivation and energy we have – for everything, including personal change. And without positive motivation our change efforts would have to depend on willpower alone, at the very time we feel depleted in energy and passion – and consequently, willpower.
So, the Paradox of Change is that we tend to be more successful in making change when we can accept that we are perfectly O.K. just the way we are.
This might seem odd, but when you think about tackling change from the opposite perspective – how easy would it be to make desired changes, and how successful would we be if we start out with the belief and feeling that we are inadequate or not good enough. We would be embarking on our change project feeling depleted of worth and consequently depleted of energy, positivity and passion.
“But”, you may say, “I will be more motivated to change if I tell myself how bad things are, and how much worse they will get if I don’t change.” While it may intuitively feel helpful to use a stick for motivation instead of a carrot, it just doesn’t work that well for most people. Many people who use this method to motivate themselves do so because it’s the only method they know. If that is the case for you, learning new ways to approach change may be very liberating for you.
Being Real
I’m not talking about some ‘rosey-coloured glasses’ approach her. Clearly it is impossible to make a plan for change that has any chance of success without realistically assessing your starting point. The most obvious reason is that you need to know your starting point to know what route to take. This requires us to be objective and realistic in order that we can plan achievable steps towards our goal.
But we also need to achieve acceptance of where we are at in the sense of being compassionate and non-judgmental. If I feel bad or wrong about where I currently am in my life, this will affect my ability to maintain my motivation and my optimism. It may also affect my ability to believe that I deserve this change, and that positive life-enhancing changes are a natural part of my birthright.
Carrot Or Stick / Cheer-leader Or Bully
As I said, many people feel that they will be more motivated if they make themselves ‘face reality’ of just how bad or lazy or undisciplined or whatever that they are, then they will be motivated to quickly change. This doesn’t work. Just think about how you feel if some-one else tells you what an awful person you are. My guess is that this would make you feel smaller and less powerful to change things in your life. On the other hand, think about people who recognize your strengths and positive personal qualities, and are also really supportive when you are wanting to learn new skills or make changes either in your work-life or outside of work life. Most people find positive ‘cheer-leading’ style of support more helpful than ongoing criticism. And if you have ever trained a puppy, you will perhaps be aware that puppies respond better to kindness and rewards for good behavior than harshness and punishment for bad. Perhaps we are all puppies at heart.
What Do You Want, Really Really Want?
So being kind and compassionate towards ourselves about where we are now will help us to change. An important point is that we are talking about ‘where you are now’ not making an excuse and ‘accepting’ that it is OK to stay in this place. If I want to be slimmer or fitter, I need to accept, both in the sense of ‘getting real’ about my current weight and fitness level and also in the sense of accepting that I am a ‘perfectly OK’ person just the way I am – who is currently carrying more weight or is at a lower fitness level than I would like. From this starting point, I am in a good position to make a plan. And focusing on what we want e.g. “I want to be slimmer” or “I want to be fitter” is more helpful than focusing on what we don’t want e.g. “I don’t want to be as heavy and overweight as I am now” or “I don’t want to be as unfit as I am now” can be a lot more motivating. Having got clear about the direction we want to head in (as opposed to the direction we want to head away from) we can then start fleshing out the details of our goal, followed by developing a plan with clear and achievable steps.
Developing Self-compassion And Acceptance – And Making The Changes You Want To Make
For many people, being accepting of themselves, exactly as they are right now is easier said than done. If you are in the habit of constant self-criticism, developing the ability to see yourself ‘through a compassionate set of eyes’ is extremely important to improving personal wellbeing. A very useful tool as you take steps on this journey is Mindfulness. One of the main pillars of Mindfulness is compassion – for ourselves and for others. An attitude of compassion permeates Mindfulness meditation of all kinds, and is a particular focus of practices such as Loving Kindness Meditation. And as we become more aware, through practising mindfulness regularly, we more quickly notice self-critical thoughts and are able to interrupt them and move to a more compassionate focus.
The Change Academy approach is two-pronged – to encourage change, and help you to make the changes that will increase your sense of wellbeing and satisfaction with your life, and to encourage self-acceptance, helping you to develop your acceptance of yourself and your life, and to be able to notice and celebrate the many gifts, strengths, talents or qualities that you have.
Through fully embracing your strengths, you will have more to contribute to the world, and will experience a greater sense of satisfaction with your life.
A penny for your thoughts … (not literally, but you know what we mean – we’d love to hear from you)
I’d love to hear your opinion and learn about your experiences: Please add your comment/s below.
While we approach some changes with a positive motivation, often we are motivated to change by some ‘pain’ or dissatisfaction. Something has happened that has forced us to face up to a situation which we have chosen to ignore – or ignore the implications of. And in these circumstances it can be much more challenging to be accepting of our short-comings and limitations. Can you think of situations in your life where focussing on self-acceptance has helped you to move forward in some area? Of have you helped some-one else to reach a point of self-acceptance that has enabled them to move forward. If so, please share your words of wisdom and tips. (Please respect confidentiality and be careful not to share details of other people’s situations, just the tips, tools and resources that helped them to move forward).
Any and all comments welcome – whether or not you agree with what I’ve written.
