Anxiety: Breathing Techniques & Other Tools

Dr. Andrew Huberman is a leading neuroscientist that is currently on a mission to provide science-based and peer-reviewed research on a variety of wellness concepts. This short lecture is conveying one of his many useful and important techniques in regards to dealing with anxiety.

Transcript

Hi,

My name is Sean and welcome to this short lecture about anxiety.

One of the leading professors in the world for neuroscience is named Andrew Huberman.

He's been doing some really truly amazing work into understanding the autonomic nervous system.

So in terms of his,

One of his goals is,

He's trying to teach people about the autonomic nervous system and how even though it is called autonomic,

It is actually not automatic and it is something that we control.

So we want to be able to control that kind of up and down part to it,

That nervous stress part and that calm and relaxed part.

And he really believes that this is something that from children really truly need to learn to do.

Because even though we may think we only want to be calm,

We do actually need times when we are stressed as that can,

For example,

Help create neuroplasticity.

So he talks about two techniques of dealing with anxiety.

The first one is what he calls an online technique.

He calls them online and offline.

So online he means when you're actually in that current state of panic or anxiety or apprehension.

And basically they found out that there's only one primary way to deal with this and that is through breathing.

The specific breathing that he teaches is related to lowering CO2 within your bloodstream.

As you might be aware of,

CO2 is a weak acid and breathing can affect the acid or alkaline nature of our blood very quickly.

Let's just take a side step here for a second and talk about how people manage to hold their breath underwater for 10 minutes.

The interesting and irony part of this skill or technique or trick or magic is actually it's not about how much oxygen you take in,

It's about controlling your release of CO2.

Because it's the CO2,

The releasing of that,

That actually is forcing you to want to release it and then take a new breath.

So it's not about the O2,

It's about the CO2.

So by very,

Very slowly releasing the CO2,

You can stay underwater for a lot longer and also of course making your body more habitually used to having a higher CO2 in your blood,

Which of course is what partially makes you dizzy when you hold your breath.

So getting back to the anxiety situation,

An online technique has to be breathing and it has to be related to lowering the CO2 levels in your blood.

So a sigh,

When we go,

Ah,

The sigh is an automatic response in the body trying to reestablish the correct CO2 levels in your blood.

So what Dr.

Andrew Huberman recommends is a double in breath and then this slow out breath.

He says you can do that one or two or three times when you're in those anxious moments that will allow that CO2 within the blood to come back to a balance.

As you may be well aware in yoga,

You also have the natural in breath and then the slow out breath.

This is very commonly used as a technique for relaxation.

The yoga does it in two ways.

You either breathe in normally and then you breathe out through the throat,

Which is like this,

But I'm exaggerating it so that you can hear something.

The throat turbulence that you create should not be audible at all.

So you breathe in and then you breathe out slowly with that little bit of turbulence in the throat.

You can also do it sometimes where they breathe in.

Naturally they close the right nostril,

Breathe out through the left nostril and then you breathe in with both nostrils naturally and then you breathe out with the right nostril only.

Now the reason why it's nostril only breathing and the reason why it's throat only breathing out is because that allows you to have a longer out breath.

You also may be aware that when you breathe in,

Your diaphragm goes down by which the pressure in the heart is somewhat less,

Thereby there are signals from the brain to the heart where one wants the heartbeat to increase.

Now when you breathe out and the diaphragm comes up and there's some pressure on the heart,

Then there are signals from the brain to the heart to beat more slowly.

So the out breath is a real key aspect of an online tool to stop anxiety or help with it.

So Dr.

Andrew Huberman then recommends that you need offline tools where you're kind of getting that base relaxation.

So here he recommends one is meditation,

Which is proven many times to be effective as an offline tool.

The second method that he recommends is panoramic viewing.

So you can go on a balcony to do it or you can go to an open park to do it or you can even do it in a room to some degree,

But I find going to open areas and open parks to be especially effective.

The other method that he recommends is called optic flow.

Optic flow means that you're walking or riding a bicycle.

So to go out there and do a walk or ride a bicycle and you're getting this movement of this optic flow is also proven to be an excellent tool.

A big meal is another tool that's used because that will also slow down the system,

But this is a much slower thing and may not really be the most effective long term technique.

So these are your offline techniques,

Which are different to your online techniques.

Now the other thing with anxiety is Dr.

Andrew Huberman's lab,

One of his postdoc students,

Actually did a test where they got mice and they put a black light over their head so it was like an eagle attacking them.

Of course there's an automatic release of noradrenaline,

The stress hormone,

And then there were mice that would run away.

Now the mice that actually move towards it quite amazingly and beautifully would also release some dopamine.

So it's really interesting to see that for the anxiety event,

We need that forward movement.

The reason why dopamine is so important is because it counteracts the noradrenaline,

Whereas when noradrenaline increases too much without the dopamine,

You end up in a situation where you want to quit.

And they worked out a lot of this stuff through studies and looking at how Navy SEALs quit and don't quit in their BUDGE training and various forms like this.

So then you've got when we want to lift the system up.

And again,

Once again,

Yoga has known this for a few hundred years where it's quick breathing.

So those who have seen the tummo breathing,

Kabalabhati,

Bastrika breathing,

And Wim Hof breathing,

These are all stimulants for the nervous system.

The other stimulant for the nervous system is cold showers and excessive or extreme focus,

Sometimes that you might even get when you're using your mobile phone.

Now what they're recommending is that if kids learn to control their autonomic nervous system from young,

Now they're very powerful,

Right?

Because you can have this refocus to focus and use it as a tool.

So sometimes you need to be calm,

Sometimes you need to have the body up a bit.

So Dr.

Huberman gives an example such as in a meeting.

When you're in a meeting,

You want to have a bit of noradrenaline to get going and focus your mind and do positive things.

Whereas when you're not in a meeting,

You need to kind of store that noradrenaline for the next meeting that's coming.

Hence,

In this case,

You kind of need to defocus it.

And when you defocus it,

You end up in a situation where you are calming and ready for the next meeting.

So I hope now you have some methods of dealing with anxiety,

And I really hope that this can have a positive benefit for you.

Reviews

I already knew Dr Andrew from his podcast The Huberman Lab and he is truly amazing and share everything. Thanks for bringing this knowledge here to insight timer too.

As ever, your talks are informative, beneficial and concise. Thank you Shaun for all your help and guidance. 🙏

Excellent Thank you

Very informative ،thank you🌸