I recently started using breathing exercises for the first time in a few years when I’m feeling anxious, and they’ve been helping a lot. I hadn’t quite realized how big of a difference actually going by time could make as opposed to just generally trying to slow my breathing - if you’ve never tried it I’d highly recommend it.
I’m having trouble finding the pattern(s) that work best, though. It seems to vary so much; one day one will feel claustrophobically slow and another day it’s anxiety-inducingly fast, kinda defeating the purpose. But I don’t want to abandon timing it altogether when my gut is apparently pretty bad at figuring out what is the right pace.
Maybe I’m just overthinking this, but I’d love to hear your opinions and experiences. Also, do you use any other physical strategies, like belly breathing?
In general things like yoga, meditating and breathing exercises can help a lot. I think it’s the mix.
I doubt that doing an exercise as reaction to hitting anxiety does not work so easily - at least it doesn’t for me. But that may be depending on individual people.
I find breathing and grounding exercises help me regain composure when I’m anxious. I like physiological sigh because it’s easy to do without much conscious thought. 2 deep inhales through the nose and a long exhale from the mouth.
I find breathing exercises, yoga and walking very helpful. Both meditative and not. I like 5-4-5 breathing I think it is? This guy… James Nestor I think went on Joe rogan and talked about breathing. I would never watch Joe now, but it is wild to think about how much cool stuff I did learn from JRE.
