After last week Wednesday’s flashback of the accident, I found myself permanently anxious on the roads and tensing up uncontrollably.
I have also not been sleeping well since the incident on Wednesday. So I went to see my psychologist yesterday and sitting in her office I suddenly couldn’t focus as the room started to spin. She immediately made me do the following exercise to calm myself down and it did work. I would like to share this exercise, so that anyone else suffering with anxiety can try this method.
BREATHING EXERCISE:
Step 1 – sit down and get your self comfortable. You may sit cross legged or you may sit on a chair with your feet firmly on the floor.
Step 2 – it’s important to relax your shoulders. Do not tense them up.
Step 3 – place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.
Step 4 – now when you inhale, inhale through your nose,using only your stomach, blow your tummy as far out as you can, as if you were pregnant. Do not let your chest move in and out, you need to keep that as still as possible.
Step 5 – as you exhale, pull your stomach as far in to your spine as you can, exhaling through your pursed lips. Continue doing this taking deep breaths in and exhaling our.
I was told by my psychologist, that we naturally do not actually breath properly, as we only use your top part of our lungs and not the bottom half, as we use our chests to breath. This deep breathing worked, trust me; the room stopped spinning and I felt more calm.
After this exercise she hypnotized me and taught me another way to calm myself down. I will keep that for another blog, I just wanted to share this easy and practical breathing exercise.
It’s beneficial if you can practice this every evening before bed or when you wake up, just give yourself 10 minutes to practice this and it will make a world of difference.
Enjoy
Liam signing out!
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