Overview
Anxiety is a mental state that can cause emotional turmoil and physical symptoms like a pounding heart, sweating, muscle tension and headaches tremors, according to the Help Guide mental health website. It also can affect respiration. There are many ways to battle anxiety. One of the most common techniques involves controlling your breathing. Deep breathing exercises are easy and convenient. They can be done whenever anxiety strikes.
Definition
Help Guide defines anxiety as the jittery feeling most people get in stressful situations or when anticipating a challenge. Anxiety is usually temporary and harmless, but it can become pervasive and cause certain physical symptoms. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) explains that it often results in a type of breathing called hyperventilation. Feeling anxious leads to rapid breathing. This can cause panic, which often makes the hyperventilation worse.
Effects
Hyperventilation caused by anxiety can cause a variety of unpleasant physical symptoms, according to NIH. These include dizziness, headache, lightheartedness and a dry mouth. It may even make the person feel like she cannot catch her breath. Much of this is triggered by low levels of carbon dioxide; rapid breaths cause a person to take in oxygen but exhale carbon dioxide, NIH explains. Deep breathing exercises can bring the levels back into the proper balance.
Characteristics
There are many different deep breathing exercises for anxiety, but they share certain characteristics. They require the anxious person to pay attention to the breathing process and slow it down. This fights anxiety on two levels. It takes the person’s mind off the anxiety and gives her something else on which to focus. It also counteracts the rapid breathing caused by her emotional state because she willfully chooses to slow it down.
Example
The Chinese Holistic Health Exercises website offers a typical deep breathing exercise to fight anxiety. It requires the person to sit comfortably with a straight back and hands placed on the thighs or in the lap. His gaze should be unfocused if his eyes are open. He can choose to close them. He breathes in deeply through his nose, counting to four in his mind as he does so. He then holds his breath for a count of seven and releases it through his mouth for a count of eight. He visualizes the anxiety and other negative emotions leaving his body with the exhalations. The exercise is repeated 10 to 12 times. It can be done at times of anxiety or as a preventative measure at any time. The number of repetitions can be built up to 25 to 30 if desired.
Warning
Anxiety can turn into a disorder that gets in the way of a person’s normal functioning. It may go beyond the scope of self-help techniques like deep breathing exercises. Help Guide recommends talking to a doctor or a counselor if it becomes so severe that it affects your life and if deep breathing and other strategies are not helping. You may need counseling or medication to get it under control.
