Breathwork For Calm

In this track, Danielle will guide you through two different breath techniques that are designed to help calm your nervous system. These techniques are useful for when you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, anxious or scattered. Note that this is recorded outside, so you will hear the sounds of the Tasmanian bush and some ambient noise.

Transcript

Hello.

Today I'm going to share with you a couple of breathing practices that can help trigger the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system.

So what that means is that's the part of your nervous system that helps us to calm down,

To downregulate if you like.

You might have heard it called the rest and digest phase or the tend and befriend element of the nervous system.

So it's really good for calming stress,

For calming anxiety and to just bring in your energy down when you feel a little bit erratic or a little bit scattered.

So the first thing we're going to do is simply to lengthen the exhale longer than the inhale.

So firstly just take a moment to check in with what your natural length breath is.

So just count.

Mine's about four at the moment.

That can change based on time of day and many other factors.

And then start by making your exhale a beat longer.

If it's already a beat longer,

So if your exhale was five and your inhale was four,

Make it two beats longer,

Two counts longer.

So I'm going to count for a few rounds.

So I'm breathing in,

Breathing out,

Breathing out,

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

Breathing out,

One more,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

So that's something you might do for five rounds,

Ten rounds,

A few minutes.

The next technique we're going to explore is called a physiological sigh.

And it's two inhales in a row,

So two sips of air in,

And then again a nice,

Long,

Slow exhale.

So I'll exaggerate the inhale with a bit of a noisy sniff.

So let's do four more of those.

Try those two practices.

Start small.

Even if it's only a minute,

It'll be helpful if you can make it several minutes.

Work up to five.

Really great techniques for calming us down in stressful times.

I hope they help.