Abdominal Breathing To Calm Stress & Anxiety

This guided abdominal breathing practice helps calm the body and mind before stressful moments - difficult decisions or challenging conversations, big meetings or presentations. We begin by grounding attention in the body and breath, then explore a simple 4-step abdominal breathing exercise using the hands to notice where the breath is moving most. The practice supports emotional regulation, eases anxiety, and helps you approach difficult situations with greater calm, focus and clarity. A powerful breathing practice you can return to whenever you need to find stability and balance.

Transcript

Imagine if in the next 10 minutes you have something really difficult or challenging to do. A difficult call, A potentially tricky or tense conversation, Presentation to your peers or a pitch for an important client. You have butterflies, Your heart races and you feel anxious or stressed and you know if you take on the challenge feeling like this you might not perform as well as you can or perhaps you might even say something that you regret. So you feel nervous, You can't sit still and meanwhile the clock ticks. So what do you do? Nine times out of ten we'll carry this with us into the situation, Into the call, The conversation, The important pitch. Occasionally the nerves fire us up and we sail through but sometimes they don't and in those situations we struggle to get our point across, We over explain, We trip over our words or we might fail to listen. But there's no surprise here, We are experiencing acute stress. Our brains and bodies are flooded with stress hormones and adrenaline just when we don't need it and the clock is still ticking. What we need is a strong dose of calm. So what might we do for that? Well we can try this abdominal breathing exercise. So ideally sit or stand up straight or deliberately change your posture and you can plant your feet on the ground and your hands can rest in your lap or by your sides, Whichever is most comfortable. You can close your eyes, Leave them open or have your gaze slightly lowered and then take a moment to acknowledge that this is a moment of stress and it's okay that you're feeling this way. And now tune into the sensations of your feet planted on the floor, Noticing the contact they make, The feeling of pressure, That stability that they provide. You will be pulled away by thoughts, Sounds, Sensations but this is okay, This is what our mind and body does. You can simply return your attention back to the sensations in your hands, In your feet, Feel the contact, The stability, The sense of being grounded. Now if it's comfortable, Follow your breath coming in and going out, Not trying to breathe in any particular way, Just following the breath. And now in step one, If you can, Place your right hand on your chest and your left hand just beneath your ribcage. Now notice the breath moving in the belly and the chest. Focus first on the right hand and then on the left hand. And now in step two, Notice the relationship between the movement in the left and right hand and follow the breath as best you can for one minute. And now in step three, Move the hand where you notice the least movement and place it on your lap or by your side and keep the other one where it is for another minute while you follow your breath as best you can. And now in step four, Move the other hand to your lap or by your side and rest here with both hands breathing for as long as you wish. Doing this simple but powerful abdominal breathing exercise can really help us tune in to where we're holding our stress. It helps us reduce our anxiety, It increases the oxygen flow and levels in our blood, It improves our muscle function and lowers our blood pressure too. So we can think and act from a place of calm and stability. Just what we need before those big challenges. When will you next try some abdominal breathing?