Emotion Regulation: Deep Belly Breathing

Are you feeling stressed, anxious, & angry? What if I told you there’s a simple tool that can help transform these challenging emotions into feelings of calmness, relaxation, concentration, and have a sense of control? If that sounds like something you need, then I have just the technique for you to try.

In this track, I’ll guide you through a practice called deep belly breathing. You can use this technique before, during, and after a triggering situation. To experience maximum benefits, consider incorporating it into your daily routine, such as during breaks at work or before sleep.

A gentle reminder: Regulation techniques aren’t about avoiding feelings. They’re here to support you in feeling and processing difficult emotions. As soon as you notice that you’ve been triggered, you can use this technique to lower the intensity of your emotions to a more manageable level, allowing you to fully feel and process what’s going on inside.

Music composed by Narek Mirzaei (Music Of Wisdom)

Transcript

We will get started.

I invite you to place your left hand on your chest like in the middle of chest okay and your right hand on your belly like above your navel above your belly button okay and now you don't have to change anything you don't have to like breathe differently or do anything different okay all I invite you is to notice that as you breathe which hand is moving is it the left hand on your chest or the right hand on your belly button okay look down and notice take a few breaths normally don't change the pace of it okay and just notice which of your hand is moving.

Take your time I will stay quiet for a while now okay so what happens is that our breath our breath pattern is usually affected by our emotions our emotional state actually impacts the you know way we are breathing the patterns of our breath so supposedly if you're feeling stress or anxiety then what will happen is that you will breathe more frequently so more number of breaths then your breath would be shallow you know there is that feeling of hyperventilation like shortness of breath when we are anxious when we are in stress and most importantly we are breathing with our chest okay we are not breathing with our belly so this is the impact of one emotion you know stress or anxiety on our breath other supposedly anger okay so if we are feeling angry then what happens firstly again the pattern is somewhat similar to stress and anxiety but there are subtle differences so what happens is that breaths are more compared to anxiety so the number of breaths are even more when we are angry and when we exhale so just before that we hold our breath okay we will do this and then you will see that you know what I'm talking about okay and then when people are angry what happens is they release their exhale with a you know force like you know when people grant okay so that kind of thing and also one more thing happens when we are angry so because of all this happening our face kind of tightens okay so like this so if I'm angry my expression or my breathing would be like this forceful inhale okay holding and then exhale and then I'm doing this faster okay so and my face tightened so all of this is happening and the thing that is affecting is that our anger the emotion is impacting all of this physiologically now let's compare it to a more like nicer state so when we are relaxed when we are meditating or when we just woke up from our sleep so we are very relaxed at that time so at that time our breath the number of breaths is very less and the breaths are very very deep so we are breathing from our belly the breaths are like so deep and so slow that we can't even notice that we are breathing while we are you know in that restful state so that's what happens when we are breathing from our belly we are more relaxed when we are breathing from our chest the breath is short we are having that shortness of breath right so that's why breathing with chest is not recommended breathing with our belly is recommended compared to breathing with our chest the reason is because when we breathe with our chest we are getting less amount of air so it feels like you know shortness of breath hyperventilation that kind of a thing it also activates our SNS that is sympathetic nervous system basically our flight or fight response so whenever we are in a stressful situation all that stress response that is happening okay so that is getting activated when we breathe from our chest and also yeah we get this muscle tension so you might have noticed that when you are dealing with a lot of stress you get pain in this area like shoulders and neck it gets stiff so the reason is that you are breathing from here and all these muscles actually help you breathe from here and breathing with our belly actually reduces the level of cortisol which is our stress hormone it also fills us with more oxygen right so we need oxygen to function our brain functions well when we have more oxygen so that's why we did the assessment so for those people whose left hand move no worries we are going to do a practice which will help you breathe with your belly more rather than your chest okay and if your right hand moved then it's just you know more relaxation for you now we are going to do some practice that will shift if your left hand moved then we will shift that for you settle in a comfortable position you can go to a quiet space I will take a pause so that you know we all have time to get settled as you are sitting in this comfortable position make sure that your spine is erect finding the stillness within you now close your eyes if you feel uncomfortable in closing your eyes then you can just lower your gaze and see two or three feet in front of you so take your time to close your eyes or lower your gaze so for this practice I invite you to imagine your belly or your stomach as a balloon a big balloon and in a few moments from now I would invite you to fill in the balloon as you take in the air and as you exhale release all the air from that balloon okay so let's begin imagine filling in the balloon so take an in-breath filling that balloon fully and now release all the air from that balloon as you exhale through your nose again breathe in filling the air in the balloon and out releasing all the air from that balloon in filling the balloon one two three four five now emptying all the air from the balloon one two three four five again in filling the balloon one two three four five now emptying the balloon one two three four five in again filling the balloon one two three four five again emptying the balloon one two three four five continue to breathe in this manner for a few more moments filling the balloon in your belly and then emptying all the air out of that balloon if your mind gets distracted by any noises or the thoughts in your head again bring your focus to the balloon in your belly okay wonderful so now let's come back notice the surface beneath you feel your weight on that surface now notice the sounds in your surrounding now whenever you feel ready you can gently open your eyes very good we just practiced deep belly breathing that's it for today's session I hope that you found it helpful in some manner and thank you for joining me and being with me here bye bye namaste

Reviews

Great tool for anxiety! Thanks Anisha! 🙏 Priscilla

Thank you Anisha 🌸
Very important reminder about belly breathing, I keep forgetting it so so often 🤭
Namaste 🙏

i loved it 🥰 thank you so much 😊
when i first put my right hand on my tummy and my left hand on my chest i could feel that my right hand was moving a lot more :D

Thank you for this very supportive meditation and reminder of how calming belly breaths are! Happy to have found you through our teacher fb group 💛

Namaste Anisha,
Here comes your much awaited 5 star review rating for acknowledging my request for tools on addressing anxiety covered in your second live session.
As much as I feel obsessed to see part 2 of changing beliefs when ever I see notification from IT, I guess I must learn to address my disappointment in healthier manner :)
I was wondering if any one of us (including you) can actually practice this meditation AT THE TIME of feeling anxious than being anxious about futuristic unreal thoughts.
Eager to see what's next in your magic cap!
With Metta,
Arpit.