Exhale long and slow. How breathing out might help you to manage anxiety.

In 2021 I had a period of acute anxiety. Medication, counselling, therapy – nothing really seemed to improve how I felt. I revisited meditation but trying to focus in on my breath made me feel even more anxious. I’d sit in the evenings trying to focus on watching TV my whole body was locked in tension – I’d try to consciously relax and I would for the seconds at a time before my body would revert back to its coiled state. I’d notice that I was often holding my breath – and it was like I had to remind myself to breathe out.

Looking back on that time now it seems that the key to “getting better” was with my breath but I was so locked in my experience, so freaked out by it that didn’t see it. Or maybe there are somethings you only realise in hindsight.

I kept going – I kept trying different things. I stepped back from some big projects – I looked at what might be causing me stress and tried to reduce it. I talked to friends, I walked in the woods, I focussed my energy on my Forest Bathing training, I was gentle with myself.

And gradually, ever so gradually, I started to feel better, to feel more like myself – no longer waking up feeling nauseous and under threat in every part of my body with a pulverising headache from having clenched my jaw all night.

When I share this experience people ask “what helped – what worked?” It’s a tricky one to answer because I tried so many things – and many of them at the same time. Maybe it all helped – maybe a tiny bit of everything contributed. Throughout the experience I had a hunch, an intuition that the key to feeling better didn’t lie in talking therapies or pills – it didn’t lie in analysing or addressing my thought processes but the answer resided in my body.

Last year I had the good fortune to be asked to join a brilliant team of folks hosting day retreats for Covid weary front line NHS staff. These retreats are designed to help the groups to revive and reconnect in nature and as part of the day we offer a selection of dynamic relaxation and breathing techniques as well as positive visualizations drawn from an approach called Sophrology.

As a member of the hosting team I’d join in on these exercises and I started to notice a sort of inner settling – a feeling of being both relaxed and yet energised. In particular I noticed that when I did the paced breathing (breathing in and out for the same count with a brief pause at the top and the bottom of the breath) or square breathing (slightly longer breath holds on the in and out breath) I felt more balanced, more centred and more me.

Around about the same time I’d been reading James Nestor’s Sunday Times Bestseller “Breath” and based on one of his suggestions I started practicing paced breathing and downloaded a paced breathing timer. I started to experiment. When I could feel anxiety building in my body and my mind began to analyse and panic to try and make the feeling go away I started to turn attention away from my thoughts to my breathing; whether it happened when I was sitting at my desk or out walking the dog – I would breath in, hold for a beat, and breath out and hold for a beat. What I noticed after a while was that my mind calmed and my body began to follow suit.

Then I remembered something that I’d read in a great book called Physical Intelligence by Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton – that paced breathing releases a chemical called Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). This is the chemical that balances out the levels of the stress hormone, Cortisol in our bodies – it improves the overall stability of our nervous and endocrine systems – and it is key for our immune system, heart-brain function (amongst many other things) and for our overall vitality.

It turns out that breathing is one of the only involuntary function of the autonomic nervous system that we have conscious control over – we can’t consciously change our heart rate or our digestion, for example, but we can alter our breathing. Breathing in activates our sympathetic nervous system (action, fight, flight) and breathing out activates our parasympathetic nervous system (rest, digest, renew). So paced breathing has a balancing effect on our nervous system, whilst a breathing exercise that involves an exhale that is slightly longer that the inhale has a calming effect.

So it turns out that for me that one of the ways to manage anxiety does indeed lie in my body. Based on my experiences (and this information above) I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that paced breathing and breath work generally is now something I practice on a day to day basis. Whenever possible I start my day with 10 minutes of paced breathing and I consciously do longer exhales throughout the day (often with quite an array of audible huffs!).

Here’s the thing.

People tell you to “take a big breath” when facing something that’s challenging or perhaps scary - but that’s only half of the picture;  the bit you really need to do when you’re stressed out or starting to feel anxious is breath out – long and slow until your lungs are completely emptied of air.

Exhale – and exhale some more - and give your body and mind a break.

I’d love to hear how you get on. Drop me a line sarah@boldly-go.go.uk

Warmly

Sarah