4-7-8 Breathing

4,7,8 breathing is a slightly advanced breathing technique so try this once you are comfortable with paying attention to your breath in your body and able to do deep, slow breathing with ease.
Regularly practicing this type of breathing with a breath hold in between the inhale and exhale is very effective for reducing anxiety.

Photo by Nine Koepfer on Unsplash

Transcript

Once you feel comfortable with deep breathing,

Then you might want to try this exercise,

Which is breathing in for four counts,

Holding for seven counts and breathing out for eight counts.

Everyone varies in how comfortable they feel with breath holding or controlling the breath in this way,

So just listen to your body and go as slowly or quickly as feels comfortable for you.

If you want to shorten the breath hold,

Then that is absolutely fine.

The most important thing is making sure the exhale is as long and slow as you are able.

So find a comfortable seat and begin.

Take a breath in and then all the way out and then in two,

Three,

Four.

Hold two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven.

Out two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

In two,

Three,

Four.

Hold two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven.

And out two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

And in two,

Three,

Four.

Hold two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven.

Out two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

Last one.

In two,

Three,

Four.

Hold two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven.

Out two,

Three,

Four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight.

And relax.

Just allow your breathing to come back to normal.

If this felt manageable for you,

Then you can do it regularly.

It's recommended to do either four rounds as we did here,

Or eight rounds if you have time and it feels comfortable.

Repeating this regularly can be very useful for reducing background anxiety.

If you found this difficult,

Then just stick with belly breathing for now,

Or play around with the timing or length of the breath hold with this one until you find something that suits you.

And then slowly build up to longer,

Slower breaths as you get more practised.