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Need help relaxing to reduce stress?
I learned some calm-down breathing exercises that helped me a lot, and I’m going to share 3 of them below…
With the world the way it is, I can’t help but love these breathing techniques to relax before bed, when I’m feeling anxious, or stressed:
Deep Belly Breathing Exercise
Deep Belly Breathing calms you down because it turns on the part of your nervous system that’s in charge of relaxing so.
Diaphragmatic breathing (also called “abdominal breathing” or “belly breathing”) encourages full oxygen exchange — slows the heartbeat and can lower or stabilize blood pressure.
Harvard Health
The University Of Michigan says to: ▪️ Sit in a comfortable position. ▪️ Put one hand on your belly other on your chest. ▪️ Take a deep breath in through your nose, and let your belly push your hand out. ▪️ Your chest should not move. ▪️ Breathe out through pursed lips as if you were whistling. ▪️ Feel the hand on your belly go in, and use it to push all the air out ▪️ Do this breathing 3 to 10 times. Take your time with each breath. ▪️ Notice how you feel at the end of the exercise.
Box Breathing Calm Down Technique
The next breathing technique I have for you is Box Breathing.
A technique used when taking slow, deep breaths. It can heighten performance and concentration while also being a powerful stress reliever. It’s also called four-square breathing.
Healthline
I picked this up on our national weekly call a while ago and really liked it.
What you do is:
- Breathe in for 4 seconds
- Hold for 4 seconds
- Breathe out for 4 seconds
- Let it sit for 4 seconds
If you feel like you can't hold for the full 4 seconds, just do what feels good for you. The meditation instructor actually called it The 16 Second De-stress, but I'm guessing the 12, 8, or 4 second de-stress would work just as well too (this is not medical advice in anyway).
4-7-8 Calm Down Breathing Exercise
4-7-8 Breathing is actually also known as the relaxing breath because a lot of people use it to help them fall asleep.
Dr. Andrew Weil believes it can help with reducing anxiety, getting to sleep, managing cravings, and controlling or reducing anger responses.
Medical News Today
What you do is:
- Breathe in for 4 seconds
- Hold for 7 seconds
- Breathe it all out for 8 seconds
- Repeat until relaxed.
In the 9 Week Control Freak test group, we did stretches every evening, and sometimes we would incorporate that breathing into it.
I really enjoyed that part.
Free Guided Meditation
I had never tried meditation before joining my wellness community, but now I couldn’t imagine life without it. And these calm-down breathing exercises can really go hand in hand with meditation too.
If you feel like you don’t have time to meditate, it really doesn’t need to take long at all.
Some are about 5 minutes and then I have some that are 10 to 15 minutes. You can go on for longer, but I usually save that for sleeping.
Grab yourself a free guided meditation below in the resource library 👇
Challenge, Recipes, & Habit Tracker Too
The meditation I mentioned in the video above is in the Free Resource Library.
Some things in the resource library now:
- Tracker & Coloring Sheets For Kids
- 25 Healthy Recipes Ebook
- 21 Day Health Habit Tracker
- 14+ Full-Length Workouts
- 15 Kids Snack Recipes
- Free Community
- And So Much More…
Check out the free resource library here!!!
