Belly Breathing For Stress And Anxiety Relief

In this short 5-minute meditation, you'll use deep belly breathing to release stress and tension from the body. Starting with three grounding breaths, you'll be guided to soften the shoulders, relax the face, and let each exhale carry away layers of tightness. From there, the practice opens into a few moments of pure stillness. nothing to do, nowhere to go. Closing with the sound of a bell and a final deep breath, this is a simple and effective reset for any stressful moment in your day.

Transcript

So hello everyone and welcome to this short guided meditation on dealing with anxiety and stress. So go ahead and start by closing your eyes if that feels comfortable for you. And if you feel more comfortable with eyes open, Just having a soft gaze towards the ground. So not moving your eyes around but having a soft gaze or eyes closed. Now we can start with a few deep belly breaths. So as we do these, Really see if you can focus on letting the belly be soft and breathing in and out through the belly. So we'll start with a deep breath. So breathing in deeply and breathing out slowly. We'll do that again. Really see if you can take a deep as breath as possible. So breathing in deeply and then breathing out. We're going to do that a third time and on the next exhale really see if you can relax all the tension and all the tightness in the body. Softening the shoulders, Softening the face. So we'll do that together. A deep full inhale. A long slow relaxing exhale. And now letting your breath return to its natural rhythm but seeing if you can keep this soft belly. So maybe having a slightly longer inhales and exhales. Or if it feels good for you, You can just keep doing these slightly deeper breathing. So breathing in and out through the belly. And then always softening and relaxing on the out-breath. So breathing in and breathing out. Imagine as if each out-breath you were shedding and letting go of layers of stress, Layers of tension. And every in-breath lengthening the spine, Finding a slightly more upright posture. So we breathe in, Lengthen the spine. Breathing out, Softening, Relaxing. Then from here you can let go of the breath and just allow yourself to rest without any meditation or mindfulness. Just allowing yourself to sit with nothing to do. There's nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish. Just allowing yourself to be still. And in a moment I'll ring the bell to end the sit and see if you can just sit still. Just tune into the sound of the bell. See if you can let the sound wash over you. And then can you notice the moment when the bell stops ringing? Slowly you can open your eyes. And to end we can take a deep breath in. And a deep breath out. Thank you.