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Total Health

Calm Your Nerves & Combat Anxiety: Step 1

By:
Edmund Bourne

step 1

Learn Deep Relaxation Techniques

Deep relaxation refers to a distinct physiological state that is the exact opposite of the way your body reacts under stress or during a panic attack. This state was originally described by Herbert Benson in 1975 as the relaxation response. It involves a series of physiological changes including:

  • Decrease in heart rate
  • Decrease in respiration rate
  • Decrease in blood pressure
  • Decrease in skeletal muscle tension
  • Decrease in metabolic rate and oxygen consumption
  • Decrease in analytical thinking
  • Increase in skin resistance
  • Increase in alpha wave activity in the brain

Regular practice of deep relaxation for twenty to thirty minutes on a daily basis can produce, over time, a generalization of relaxation to the rest of your life. That is, after several weeks of practicing deep relaxation once per day, you will tend to feel more relaxed all the time.Numerous other benefits of deep relaxation have been documented over the past twenty years. These include:

  • Reduction of generalized anxiety. Many people have found that regular practice also reduces the frequency and severity of panic attacks.
  • Preventing stress from becoming cumulative. Unabated stress tends to build up over time. Entering into a state of physiological quiescence once a day gives your body the opportunity to recover from the effects of stress. Even sleep can fail to break the cumulative stress cycle unless you've given yourself permission to deeply relax while awake.
  • Increased energy level and productivity. (When under stress, you may work against yourself and become less efficient.)
  • Improved concentration and memory. Regular practice of deep relaxation tends to increase your ability to focus and keeps your mind from "racing."
  • Reduction of insomnia and fatigue. Learning to relax leads to sleep that is deeper and sounder.
  • Prevention and/or reduction of psychosomatic disorders such as hypertension, migraines, headaches, asthma, ulcers, and so on.
  • Increased self-confidence and reduced self-blame. For many people, stress and excessive self-criticism or feelings of inadequacy go hand in hand. You can perform better, as well as feel better, when you are relaxed.
  • Increased availability of feelings. Muscle tension is one of the chief impediments to an awareness of your feelings.

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. 

Next Page: Learn another effective breathing technique

Calming Breath ExerciseThe Calming Breath Exercise was adapted from the ancient discipline of yoga. It is a very efficient technique for achieving a deep state of relaxation quickly.

  1. Breathing from your abdomen, inhale through your nose slowly to a count of five (count slowly "one... two... three... four... five" as you inhale).
  2. Pause and hold your breath to a count of five.
  3. Exhale slowly, through your nose or mouth, to a count of five (or more if it takes you longer). Be sure to exhale fully.
  4. When you've exhaled completely, take two breaths in your normal rhythm, then repeat Steps 1 through 3 in the cycle above.
  5. Keep up the exercise for at least three to five minutes. This should involve going through at least ten cycles of in-five, hold-five, out-five. As you continue the exercise, you may notice that you can count higher when you exhale than when you inhale. Allow these variations in your counting to occur if they do, and just continue with the exercise for up to five minutes. Remember to take two normal breaths between each cycle. If you start to feel light-headed while practicing this exercise, stop for thirty seconds and then start again.
  6. Throughout the exercise, keep your breathing smooth and regular, without gulping in breaths or breathing out suddenly.

Practice the Abdominal Breathing or Calming Breath Exercise for five minutes every day for at least two weeks. If possible, find a regular time each day to do this so that your breathing exercise becomes a habit. Once you feel you've gained some mastery in the use of either technique, apply it when you feel stressed, anxious, or when you experience the onset of panic symptoms. By extending your practice of either breathing exercise to a month or longer, you will begin to retrain yourself to breathe from your abdomen. The more you can shift the center of your breathing from your chest to your abdomen, the more consistently you will feel relaxed on an ongoing basis.Next Step: Find out how regular exercise can greatly reduce your anxiety

 

 
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