Breathing is a simple means of reducing anxiety

ARE you increasingly impatient and irritable? Maybe your palms sweat and your pulse rate rises?

Anxiety is on the rise, and it is taking its toll on our short- and long-term health, but there are some simple steps to relaxing; deep breathing is a prime example.

It soothes and calms and clears the head, benefits that can easily be carried through into everyday life.

Health therapist, Marisa Peer, is a huge believer in breathing properly, telling many of her clients about its importance.

“A lot of people don’t breathe properly,” she says.

“They just breathe from the top part of their lungs, what we call shallow breathing.”

So how do you breathe ‘properly’? “The best way is to put one hand on your stomach, below your naval, and one hand above your naval, and then breathe in and out,” Peer says.

If you notice that only your top hand moves up and down as you inhale and exhale, then you’re breathing too shallow.

“What you need to do is really make sure that the bottom hand is moving up and down, too,” says Peer. “It’s very easy to get just the top hand to move up and down, so you may have to really think about it, at first.

“Imagine your lungs as a pair of bellows: you’ve got to fill the bottom section and slowly draw the breath right in, until your tummy below your naval is filling out.

“Look at how babies breathe — they very much do what we call lower-belly breathing and fill their bellies with air. We should all do that, really, but because we’re so rushed, we tend to hold our breath.”

It’s a good idea to spend a few minutes a day practising.

“When you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, take a couple of minutes and put your hands on your tummy and just practice breathing deeply,” says Peer, who has authored a range of books, with her latest, You Can Be Younger, out in April.

The great thing about deep breathing is that you can do it anywhere.

Using it to relax and re-balance in critical moments of high stress, before a job interview or intense meeting, for example, can be particularly useful.

“It can have a very, very quick effect on the body and mind,” says Peer. “You’re oxygenating your blood and you will feel better very quickly.”

For maximum effect, remove yourself from a situation for a few minutes — if you can, find a quiet corner or just stand still and close your eyes.

Breathe in deeply and slowly for the count of eight, and then hold for 12 or 16 seconds, before exhaling slowly.

Doing this a few times can have an instant re-balancing effect, calming a racing heart and mind.