How can you achieve a state of deep relaxation? By teaching yourself abdominal breathing exercises.Next page: Learn how to breathe from your abdomen

Exercise: Learn how to breathe from your abdomenYour breathing directly reflects the level of tension you carry in your body. Under tension, your breathing usually becomes shallow and rapid, and occurs high in the chest. When relaxed, you breathe more fully, more deeply, and from your abdomen. It's difficult to be tense and to breathe from your abdomen at the same time. A few benefits of abdominal breathing include:

• Greater feelings of connectedness between mind and body. Anxiety and worry tend to keep you "up in your head." A few minutes of deep abdominal breathing will help bring you down into your whole body.
• Abdominal breathing by itself can trigger a relaxation response.

Next Page: Try these breathing exercises — Abdominal Breathing and Calming Breath Exercise

Abdominal Breathing

1. Note the level of tension you're feeling. Then place one hand on your abdomen right beneath your rib cage.
2. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose into the "bottom" of your lungs — in other words, send the air as low down as you can. If you're breathing from your abdomen, your hand should actually rise. Your chest should move only slightly while your abdomen expands. (In abdominal breathing, the diaphragm — the muscle that separates the lung cavity from the abdominal cavity — moves downward. In so doing it causes the muscles surrounding the abdominal cavity to push outward.)
3. When you've taken in a full breath, pause for a moment and then exhale slowly through your nose or mouth, depending on your preference. Be sure to exhale fully. As you exhale, allow your whole body to just let go (you might visualize your arms and legs going loose and limp like a rag doll).
4. Do ten slow, full abdominal breaths. Try to keep your breathing smooth and regular, without gulping in a big breath or letting your breath out all at once. It will help to slow down your breathing if you slowly count to four on the inhale (1-2-3-4) and then slowly count to four on the exhale. Remember to pause briefly at the end of each inhalation. Count from ten down to one backward, one number with each exhalation. The process should go like this:Slow inhale... Pause... Slow exhale (count "ten")
   Slow inhale... Pause... Slow exhale (count "nine")
   Slow inhale... Pause... Slow exhale (count "eight")and so on down to one. If you start to feel light-headed while practicing abdominal breathing, stop for 15-20 seconds, and then start again.
5. Extend the exercise if you wish by doing two or three "sets" of abdominal breaths, remembering to count backward from ten to one for each set (each exhalation counts as one number). Five full minutes of abdominal breathing will have a pronounced effect in reducing anxiety or early symptoms of panic. Some people prefer to count from one to ten instead. Feel free to do this if it suits you.