Discover Simple Breathing Exercises to Extinguish Your Stress Response
Breathing exercises are quite cliche now, and it seems that everyone is suggesting them for one thing or another. I don’t teach meditation and I’m no fan of over-spiritualisation. But I don’t want us to throw out the baby with the bath water. I want to look at the why and the how of breathing exercises. I’m going to keep things quite general here while we explore the basic principle. Once we understand it in general terms I hope you’ll see how it’s possible to get madly specific with this process, so let’s dig in.
We all experience stress and anxiety. I know they are different things, but the symptoms in the body are almost identical so in this context the topic covers both equally well. That “fight-or-flight” feeling can be overwhelming, leaving you with a racing heart, sweaty palms, and shallow breathing. But what if you could control this response with a simple tool you always have with you?
No doubt you’ve seen the “elements of fire” diagram before. The idea is simple: Take away any one of the elements and your fire goes out.
Now, imagine stress as a fire. It needs three elements to burn: Fuel (trigger situation), oxygen (negative thoughts and beliefs), and heat (behaviours – physical symptoms of stress). Breathing exercises work like a fire extinguisher, removing one of those elements.
To tackle stress you can
- Address the trigger: Walk away from the situation – valid, but not always practical.
- Tackle your cognitions, the negative thoughts and beliefs that interpret the situation as a threat and send stress signals to your brain – this is an awesome part of what hypnotherapy can do.
- Consciously change the way you behave in the moment – really beneficial and powerful, but can be improved on by hypnotherapy, I’ll get to how in a bit…
While we can’t always control the trigger, we can influence our thoughts (particularly with hypnosis). Breathing exercises come into the catgory of affecting our behaviours:
The Breath-Body Connection:
When we’re stressed, our Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) kicks in, ramping up stress hormones and causing those fight-or-flight symptoms. However, by consciously changing our breathing patterns, we can activate the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) – our “rest-and-digest” system.
The PNS, specifically the vagus nerve, connects to your heart, lungs, and digestive system. By stimulating this nerve through deep breathing you:
- Slow your heart rate
- Deepen your breathing
- Promote relaxation
This signals to the brain that the threat has passed and the SNS gives up. The production of cortisol and glutamate (stress hormones) is reduced and your body and mind calm down.
The Power of Practice
Regularly practising breathing exercises not only helps in the moment, but also improves your overall well-being. It becomes easier to manage stress as you train your body to respond differently. Now here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter which breathing exercise you do. Whether it’s box breathing, mindful breathing or any of the other slow-and-hold style exercise the result is the same. You are consciously editing your behaviour in the moment, taking away an element from the triangle and teaching yourself a new way to respond.
Beyond Breath: The Hypnotherapy Advantage
While breathing exercises are powerful, hypnotherapy can take it a step further. Notice how taking away the problem behaviour by conscious effort has a practical (and chemical) effect in the body? What about that second element of the stress-fire, cognition? Well, here’s where we start to get specific. I hope you’re beginning to see that we can describe a stress response with a formula like this:
Trigger x Cognition = Stress behaviour
People often forget about the role of their cognitions in their problems. All the time I hear my clients say “this or that situation causes me anxiety”. Firstly, I don’t mean to be pedantic, but the situation causes anxiety ONLY in the presence of negative cognitions, otherwise it would make everyone behave the same. Secondly, as we’ve learned from our look at breathing exercises there is a two way relationship that exists here. Just as much as cognitions affect behaviour, so too behaviour affects cognitions.
By doing the breathing exercises you are already performing a two way action to a certain degree. You are consciously regulating your breathing and unconsciously saying to your brain the “threat has passed, I’m in control”. This new cognition drives the change from the Sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. In hypnosis we can custom design your cognitions around your triggers. We can encourage response behaviours which support those new, positive cognitions. We can address limiting beliefs, self doubt, imposter syndrome, low self esteem issues, and intrusive negative thoughts like worst-case-scenario thinking.
Hypnotherapy can help you:
- Identify and address negative thought patterns that fuel anxiety.
- Develop an “off switch” for unwanted stress behaviours.
- Program your mind to respond calmly to stressful situations.
- Extinguish stress and anxiety at the point of cognition, before it becomes a behaviour
Ready to Breathe Easier and Live Calmer?
Schedule a free call to explore how hypnotherapy can help you conquer stress and anxiety for good!