I. What are breathing exercises?

Course speech

Breathing exercises are techniques which can help your natural breathing process reduce stress brought on by anxiety. They can help you anticipate the beginnings of a panic or anxiety attack and stop it from becoming more severe. In these exercises, you will be re-training yourself to move away from the shallow breathing or ‘chest breathing’ that you automatically use every day, and into deeper breathing using your diaphragm in order to take in more oxygen and to release more carbon dioxide. Deeper breathing will enhance your relaxation, health, and overall wellbeing. Other exercises in this lesson will teach you how to breathe more rhythmically, how to breathe using your nose as a filter for incoming air, and how to use breathing as a medium for better focus and concentration. Studies and research have shown that better breathing techniques and deeper breathing can improve all aspects of life:

  • Helps cope with stress in everyday situations
  • Helps long-term physical and mental health
  • Helps moderate long-term stress related to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
  • Improves heart
  • Prevents infection
  • Helps sleep function
  • Increases oxygen circulation while exercising is a recognized form of treatment for stress

Breathing exercises

Breathing exercises actually compliment many other treatments for anxiety, like psychological therapy or other physical health techniques. Please see lessons on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and Relaxation Exercise for more information. There are many breathing exercises or techniques that can be used in the treatment of anxiety and they are all included in this lesson:

1. Diaphragmatic Breathing:

Diaphragmatic Breathing exercises involves re-training you to breathe from your diaphragm instead of from your chest.  This exercise is as much a tool to combat stress and anxiety as it is a new way of breathing. The state of your physical and mental health will be enhanced by this breathing process.

2. Focused Breathing Exercises:

In focused breathing, it helps you to focus on each breath you take, and to empty all unnecessary thoughts from your mind. Focused breathing exercises help you reach a state of relaxation as you learn to take longer and slower breaths. Some exercises include:

  • Focused breathing
  • Deep breathing
  • Pursed-lip breathing

3. Movement Therapy Breathing Techniques:

These breathing exercises are integral to the movement therapies of Yoga and Qigong, which have mind-focusing components that work together for physical and mental wellbeing. Breathing techniques are part of a bigger movement therapy. Breathing techniques can be practised separately as an exercise. This kind of separate breathing practice has been beneficial in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Movement therapy breathing techniques include:

  • Pranayama (Yogic Breathing)
  • Qigong Breathing

4. Mind-focusing Breathing

Mind-focusing breathing exercises use breathing as a channel for recognizing worrying thoughts and feelings of physical pain. Once you have identified what these thoughts are, it will be easier for you to rid them from your mind. These exercises include:

  • Mind-focusing Breathing
  • “Smile” breathing

5. Hyperventilation Prevention

This is a breathing exercise that you can do at any time when you are breathing fast due to anxiety or panic. It can prevent you from hyperventilating because you are taking in too much carbon dioxide or because you are feeling faint.

Like every therapy, finding out which gives you the most relief is based on your own personal experiences with anxiety, physical activities, and lifestyle preferences. You may find your best option by simply reading about the breathing exercises and how best to use them or try some or all of them to find out which one works best for your level of anxiety. In the end, it is up to you to choose the right ones in order to free your life from stress and Breathing Exercises offer you some of those choices.