Practice: Breath awareness for stress
At times when you feel stressed, worried, anxious, overwhelmed or even just unclear and muddled, maybe you react to the situation by acting out, running away, shutting down or grab a drink or chocolate as a pacifier.
Have you tried to focus on your breath?
Next time you feel yourself feeling these uncomfortable emotions rearing its head,
Pause, notice how it feels in your body?
Describe it by how it feels, where you feel it, it’s texture or colour.
Touch or hold this area or place your hands to your heart
Notice if just touching the area or your heart and bringing awareness to your breath changes the intensity, maybe it lessens?
Breath awareness techniques
Maybe try one of these breath techniques for a couple of minutes and see if the intensity of your emotions lessens, dissolve, or even go.
1. Notice your breath, be curious without expectation, enabling you to feel it as not to limit your experience.
Where does the breath enter; at which part of your body do you feel the first movement of the in breath?
How does the breath move around the body, by the sensed self and not by what you think. Let go of preconceived ideas.
Watch the in breath
Watch the out breath
Observe both the in breath and out breath, stay with just one if focusing on both feels too much.
Do this for a few minutes and then come back to normal breath and notice how you feel now.
What’s changed? Even if only a little.
Maybe you feel lighter, less anxious or stressed, maybe the reaction of grabbing the drink or chocolate has subsided or maybe you can make better decisions and just chose to breathe, pause. Have more clarity in your decisions?
Awareness is the key to change, repetition creates habit.
2. Count your inhalation, how many counts is this?
Try to breathe at your own comfortable rate and pace.
Now do the same with the exhalation, example. inhale 4 exhale 4, the number here is to act as a guide and be any number, so no right or wrong
You may choose to opt with just the noticing part, or you may wish to try aiming, not forcing, to let the exhale be a little longer than the inhale.
Use this counting technique for a couple of minutes until you feel a little more relaxed. IF you still feel out of sorts then pause and retry if you can.
Notice, you may find this a struggle to focus on the counting if you are overwhelmed, but be kind to yourself, notice how long it takes to get into the practice and note if it gets easier over time.
Breath control is the easiest and simplest method to begin to improve how you feel, but like anything it is a practice, an ongoing practice that is rewarding and beneficial.
Thank you for being here, I hope this was helpful, and if not now, maybe another time.
If you found it useful, please share to anyone you think may benefit.
May your breath always nourish you,
Namaste Sue x
Guided meditations for you to try,
breath awareness somatic meditation by Sue on insight timer
find your rhythm breath meditation by Peter on insight timer
