Breathwork
Breathwork is a powerful tool for physical and mental wellbeing. Practiced regularly it has been shown to reduce anxiety, and blood pressure and to enhance sleep.
Breathwork practices range from simple to complex. The resources on this page are for simple practices with mid-level practices coming soon.
Disclaimer: When engaging in higher levels of difficulty, it is best to first check with your physician and to work with an experience practitioner until you have the rhythms and movements of the practice.
A simple starting practice to calm your fight or flight response with a great explanation of our autonomic responses from the Holistic Psychologist. The 4-7-8 breath or the Long Exhale
Another simple practice to invite calm is Box Breath. This practice relies on inhales and exhales of equal length separated by pauses of the same length:
Breath in to the count of 4
Pause for 4 counts
Breath out to the count of 4
Pause for 4 counts.
It is that simple. Begin the practice with four cycles of inhale-pause-exhale-pause, increasing as you become more comfortable - up to 2 minutes.
More than the length of time, a few times a day, consistently, will make the difference.