Feeling Anxious or Stressed? Try 4-7-8 Breathing to Feel Calmer, Quickly

Image by Joshua Earle

Sometimes, we have to acknowledge that modern psychology doesn’t have all the answers. With great humility, we also have to realise that some of the most powerful, deeply healing techniques have been around for thousands of years. Take mindfulness, which only entered the Western medical mainstream in the 1970s. Mindfulness techniques were developed and taught by the Buddha 2,500 years ago, so it took us a while to catch up!

Another set of powerful techniques that have increasingly become mainstream are deep-breathing techniques, which can be incredibly helpful for any ‘hyperaroused’ (high-energy) state such as stress, anxiety, anger or agitation. Many of these techniques are part of the yogic tradition, which has been around for thousands of years (it’s hard to know exactly how long, but 5,000 years is an oft-quoted figure – let’s just say a long time).

These pranayama breathing techniques involve a whole host of practices, but this post will focus on 4-7-8 Breathing, which is incredibly powerful – what I call a ‘break the glass in case of emergency’ breathing technique, as opposed to the gentler Compassionate Breathing, which is also a key part of my therapy toolkit.

When should you use 4-7-8 breathing?

The first thing to say is that this isn’t one of those deep-breathing techniques you can surreptitiously use on the Tube, or in a meeting. It’s kind of loud and pretty funky, so it’s one for a quiet room, alone (or with your therapist, partner or a trusted friend/family member). As with Compassionate Breathing and Box Breathing (another ‘emergency’ technique I often teach people), this 4-7-8 Breathing involves abdominal/diaphragmatic breathing to help you move from a stress response to a relaxation response.

First, a little science (feel free to skip this bit if you want to go straight to the practice, below). Your heart, lungs, digestion and various other systems in your body are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. And this is divided into two branches, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The sympathetic branch is all about action and is a key part of the fight-flight response (fight being linked to the emotion of anger, flight to anxiety).

Put simply, this branch of the nervous system helps you mobilise for action to escape or fight off a life-or-death threat. So it’s pretty handy. But not so useful if you’re on a bus, or in a parent-teacher meeting, and are flooded with panic and anxiety. And sadly, if you’re a trauma survivor, you will probably have way too much SNS activation and not enough PNS in your life, so we need to fire up that parasympathetic system, which is involved in the rest-and-digest response and feelings of calm, relaxation, peacefulness and safety. The good stuff that we all want more of, but which can be elusive, especially if you’re chronically stressed or anxious.

The good news is that just a few minutes of 4-7-8 Breathing can quickly and powerfully activate the PNS, helping you move from stressed to more relaxed. Here’s how it works…

The practice

I would recommend trying this on your own in a quiet room. Switch your phone off and make sure you won’t be disturbed – take a few minutes out of your busy day, just for yourself. You can just count the breaths, slowly, in your head.

When you’re first learning, try to practice at least twice a day, but you can do it as often as you want. Only do it for four cycles in a row in the beginning. After you get used to it, you can work up to eight cycles in a row, throughout the day.

1. Start by adjusting your posture – gently roll your shoulders back and lengthen your spine, so you’re sitting in an upright but relaxed posture. You can close your eyes, or leave them open if you prefer.

2. Place your tongue against the back of your top teeth and keep it there.

3. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whooshing sound (this might feel a bit silly at first, but give it a go). Try to get every molecule of air out of your lungs.

4. Close your mouth and inhale through your nose for a count of four.

5. Now hold your breath for a count of seven.

6. Exhale completely through your mouth, with added whooshing, for a count of eight. Get all that stale air out of your lungs…

7. This completes one cycle. Repeat for three more cycles.

Remember that, like any new technique, this might feel a bit weird, clunky or challenging at first. Try not to get discouraged – remember that practice makes perfect. Give it a go, for at least a few days.

If you really struggle (and some people do find this practice challenging, especially that long hold), switch to Box Breathing, Compassionate Breathing or just plain old deep breathing instead. As long as you breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, and your belly is rising and falling with each breath, it should definitely help.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Compassionate Breathing: A Step-By-Step Guide

This is a foundational practice that I use with all of my clients, to help them regulate their nervous system. You can use this practice any time you feel triggered and either ‘hyperaroused’ (high-energy states like being stressed, agitated, angry, upset, anxious) or ‘hypoaroused’ (low-energy states like being sad, ashamed, depressed or dissociated).

If you are a trauma survivor, you may experience one or both of these states on a daily basis, perhaps cycling between them – so having some simple, effective techniques to help manage that is crucial.

You can be guided by my video on Compassionate Breathing, below, but it’s helpful to read these guidelines first, to give you some idea of when to use the practice and what you are trying to achieve. The first two stages of the practice focus on calming and regulating your nervous system by adjusting the speed and depth of your breathing. I will send you a follow-up post which guides you through stages three and four, to help you generate self-compassion, sending warmth and kindness to the hurt little boy or girl inside.

It’s helpful to understand a little about the nervous system first. If you feel threatened and your brain decides that fight or flight are the best survival options, you feel either angry (signalling fight) or anxious (telling you that flight is the best option), your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you start ‘chest breathing’ (fast, shallow breaths from the top part of your lungs), your muscles tense up, heart rate increases and you get a bit shot of adrenaline/cortisol into your bloodstream.

All of this gives you strength and energy to either fight or flee – great news if you are faced with a hungry predator, not so good if you are on a busy Tube train. And if you can’t fight or flee, your brain triggers the freeze response, which can make you feel collapsed, exhausted, paralysed, spacey or numb.

This technique help you breathe deeply and abdominally, which is the opposite of fast, shallow chest breathing. And breathing abdominally stimulates the vagus nerve, which also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and the ‘rest and digest’ response to help you feel calmer, safer and more at peace – helpful whether you’re in a high- or low-energy state.

The practice

1. Adjust your posture. Make sure your feet are flat and grounded on the floor, then let your shoulders gently roll back so your chest feels spacious and open. Now lengthen your spine – sit upright but relaxed, with your head, neck and spine in alignment. Imagine an invisible piece of string attached to the top of your head, pulling you gently upright.

Sitting in this position helps you feel grounded, alert and stronger in your core. There is a great deal of research on the link between your posture and mood, so just a simple adjustment in posture can help you feel a bit more energised and stronger, with a subtle but noticeable uplift in your energy and mood.

2. Begin Compassionate Breathing. Close your eyes, take deep, slow breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Your breaths should be roughly four seconds in, four seconds out. Imagine that your abdomen is like a balloon, inflating on the in-breath, deflating on the out-breath. Keep breathing, noticing everything slowing down and letting your muscles start to relax.

Breathing this way should help you feel calmer within a minute or so, but if you have time, I recommend extending the practice for up to five minutes – it’s just deep breathing, so you can’t do it too much! I also love this practice because you can do it anywhere – on the bus, in a difficult meeting, at your desk…

Try using Compassionate Breathing every day, especially when you’re feeling triggered in any way. I very much hope that, over time, it will help you feel calmer, more relaxed and mindfully present in your day-to-day life.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try Box Breathing to Feel Calmer, Quickly

Image by Johnny Africa

Everybody wants to feel calm, right? That’s a no-brainer. But feeling calmer, more relaxed, peaceful and at ease is not easy, especially if you have a trauma history and/or struggle with chronic anxiety, stress or anger.

These emotional states are the polar opposite of calm, primarily because they are designed to be – they’re all linked to the fight-or-flight response, gearing us up for action when we face a life-or-death threat like a hungry grizzly or hostile tribe after our territory. Of course, we rarely encounter threats like this in a modern, urban, 21st-century environment, but your brain doesn’t know that. Millions of years of evolution have primed it to react, strongly and instantaneously, to any real or perceived threat you encounter.

Having tried many different techniques over the years to help people feel calmer and more relaxed, I think that the huge variety of breathing techniques available to us can be incredibly powerful and effective. Of course, Yogis have known about these techniques for thousands of years, but we in the West are now latching on to their life-changing potential.

I have written extensively about Compassionate Breathing, my go-to technique to help soothe and regulate my clients’ (and my) nervous system. I am also evangelical about Box Breathing, which I see as more of an ‘emergency’ breathing technique, to use if you are feeling panicky, highly anxious or stressed, have a big presentation you’re freaking out about – or for any situation in which you want to feel calmer, quickly.

How it works

Box Breathing works so well because it does a whole bunch of stuff at the same time. This includes:

• Stimulating your vagus nerve and in turn your parasympathetic nervous system (the ‘brake’ branch of your autonomic nervous system, which helps you feel calm, digest food and sleep)

• Increase oxygen levels throughout your body, lower blood pressure and help you breathe as humans are designed to, most of the time – slowly and deeply

• Help you breathe from your abdomen, rather than a too-small section of your lungs (this is called ‘chest breathing’ and is how we breathe when fight-or-flight gets triggered)

• Give you not one, but two different forms of healthy distraction (counting and visualisation), allowing you to stop obsessively worrying, ruminating about something upsetting in the past, or imagining some awful thing in the future

The practice

Start by adjusting your posture, rolling your shoulders back, opening up the chest and sitting with an upright but relaxed posture. You will want to breathe, as deeply as possible, in through your nose for a count of four seconds, feeling your abdomen inflate like a balloon (just count, slowly, in your mind: one, two, three, four). Then hold that breath for four seconds (one, two, three, four).

And then breathe out through your mouth, letting your abdomen deflate and trying to get every bit of air out of your body (one, two, three, four). Hold for, you guessed it, four seconds (one, two, three, four). Then start the whole cycle again: in-breath, hold, out-breath, hold…

Close your eyes, if that feels comfortable for you, or just lower and soften your gaze. And you can also try visualising a square in your mind, lighting up from the bottom-left corner and running up the vertical line to the top-left corner for your in-breath; across, horizontally, to the top-right corner for your hold; down, vertically, to the bottom-right corner for your out-breath; then left, horizontally for your hold.

Got that? Hope so.

The longer the better

Do this for anything from one to (ideally) five minutes and you should notice a dramatic difference in your physical and emotional state. When I use Box Breathing I notice my body starts to feel really heavy and relaxed, especially if I can do it for longer stretches of time.

Try using Box Breathing every day, but especially when you’re feeling stressed, anxious, angry, agitated, hyper, frazzled, wired or tense; you need to perform in some way that’s stressing you out (driving test, first date, public speaking) or you’re struggling with insomnia, either having a tough time falling asleep or getting back to sleep in the night.

I really hope that helps. I have recorded a step-by-step guide to this technique for my Insight Timer collection, so just click the button below if you would like to listen now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try This Healing Self-Compassion Practice Every Day

Image by Ravi Pinisetti

I wrote a recent post about how to use Compassionate Breathing to help calm yourself down and regulate your nervous system (here’s a step-by-step practice I recorded for Insight Timer). You can use these two steps as a standalone practice, or try them as part of a four-stage practice that I use with all of my clients, which adds a couple of stages focused on developing self-compassion.

Again, I have recorded an audio version for Insight Timer – and you can watch the video, below, for a step-by-step guide to this simple, powerful practice. Before you try it, you will need to be acquainted with the vulnerable little boy or girl inside, who we direct the compassion to. This idea comes from both schema therapy and internal family systems therapy, so have a read of these pages first, if you would like. (This is not essential, but will make the practice more powerful for you).

THE PRACTICE

1. Adjust Your Posture. Make sure your feet are flat and grounded on the floor, then let your shoulders gently roll back so your chest feels open. Now lengthen your spine – sit upright but relaxed, with your head, neck and spine in alignment. Imagine an invisible piece of string attached to the top of your head, pulling you gently upright.

Sitting in this position helps you feel grounded, alert and stronger in your core. There is a lot of research on the link between your posture and mood, so just a simple adjustment in your posture can help you feel a bit more energised and stronger, with a slight uplift in your energy and mood.

2. Compassionate Breathing. Close your eyes, take deep, slow breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Your breaths should be roughly four seconds in, four seconds out – try counting the in-breath for one, two, three, four… then the out-breath for the same count. Imagine that your abdomen is like a balloon, inflating on the in-breath, deflating on the out-breath. Keep breathing, noticing everything slowing down and letting your muscles start to relax.

Breathing this way should help you feel calmer within a minute or so, but if you have time, I recommend extending the practice for up to five minutes – it’s just deep breathing, so you can’t do it too much! I also love this practice because you can do it anywhere – on the bus, in a difficult meeting, at your desk…

3. Supportive Touch. Gently place a hand over your heart in a friendly, supportive manner. Feel the warmth under your hand and imagine it trickling down until it reaches the hurt little girl or boy inside. Imagine that’s a warm, kind, healing energy that soothes this frightened or upset part of you.

4. Compassionate Self-Talk. Now talk to your little self the way you would to a troubled friend. Try to use a voice tone that’s warm, slow and reassuring. Say things like “Oh, Little Jane/James, I know you’re struggling right now – I really see how scared/upset/angry you are... But I want you to know that you’re not alone... I’m here with you... I care about you... I’ve got you... And we will get through this together...”’

Try this every day. You can play around with just using steps one and two, which are easier and can be done anywhere. And then add steps three and four when you’re alone and have time.

I very much hope that, over time, this will help you feel calmer and more relaxed; as well as generating self-compassion, which is a key skill in trauma recovery.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try These Simple, Powerful Relaxation Techniques

Image by Hannah Oliver

When you are stressed or anxious, it's often hard to relax. So you will probably have a great deal of tension in your muscles – this is one reason for the muscular aches and pains, headaches, stiff neck, tight chest and back pain people suffering from stress or anxiety often experience. Learning to relax is a vital step on your route back to health and happiness. It's also an excellent way to combat insomnia.

Before I explain the techniques, a couple of general points. First, like any new skill, you may find these techniques take practice to master. It's like learning a musical instrument: you wouldn't expect to sit at a piano and play a complex classical piece on your first day.

Your stress or anxiety may have been building over months or even years, so it will take time both to learn these techniques and gradually reduce your levels of tension.

Second, the more you try these techniques when you are not stressed, anxious or upset, the more skilled you will become and so can use them even when you feel overwhelmed (I find that many clients stop using self-help techniques when they are having a rough time – which is, of course, when they need them the most).

And then the key is to use them every day. Like other cognitive therapy techniques, these are lifelong skills, available to you whenever your symptoms return.

Soothing-rhythm breathing

This simple breathing exercise (which is one of the key techniques in compassion-focused therapy) is an effective way to reduce stress or anxiety and increase feelings of calm, peacefulness and safeness. When you become anxious, your respiration becomes fast and shallow 'chest breathing'.

This can cause hyperventilation, as you inhale too much oxygen and become dizzy and light-headed. Instead, you need to breathe slowly and deeply, which turns off your ‘stress response’ and switches on your ‘relaxation response’.

Please note – these are only guidelines, not a set of rules. The most important thing is that you find a style and rhythm of breathing that feels calming and soothing to you. So vary the length of breaths, whether you breathe your nose or mouth, and so on, to find the approach that works best for you.

1. Find somewhere private and quiet, then sit comfortably and close your eyes. Switch off your phone so you won't be disturbed. Take a deep breath through your nose to a slow count of four. It can be helpful to count each number in your mind as you breathe, so thinking One, two, three, four on each breath.

2. Exhale through your nose to a slow count of four.

3. Continue to breathe slowly, deeply and evenly, in and out through your nose. If you are breathing deeply, you should naturally feel your abdomen rising on the in-breath and falling on the out-breath – don’t force this or worry if your abdomen isn’t moving. Breathing slowly and deeply is the most important thing.

4. Repeat this cycle for at least a minute.

5. Once you feel comfortable with this exercise, try increasing the time to five minutes or more. The key here is to breathe slowly and deeply – this has the physiological effect of slowing your heart rate and sending messages to the brain that everything's fine, you can relax.

Progressive muscular relaxation (PMR)

It's important to breathe slowly and regularly while doing this exercise. Tense your muscles, without straining, and concentrate on the sensation of tension. Hold for about five seconds, then let go of the tension for 10-15 seconds. Tune into the sensation of how your muscles feel when you relax them.

1. Feet. Pull your toes back and tense the muscles in your feet. Relax and repeat.

2. Legs. Straighten your legs and point your toes upward. Relax, let your legs go limp and repeat.

3. Abdomen. Tense your stomach muscles by pulling them up and in. Relax and repeat.

4. Back. Arch your back. Relax and repeat.

5. Shoulders & neck. Shrug your shoulders, bringing them up and in towards your chest and pressing your head back. Relax and repeat.

6. Arms & hands. Stretch out your arms and hands. Relax, let your arms hang limp and repeat.

7. Face. Tense your forehead and jaw, lower your eyebrows. Relax and repeat.

8. Whole body. Finally, tense your entire body: feet, legs, abdomen, back, shoulders and neck, arms and face. Hold the tension for a few seconds, relax and repeat.

If you still feel tense at the end of the routine, go through it again. If only certain body parts still feel tense, repeat the exercise in those areas. When you have finished and feel relaxed, stay where you are for a few moments, then stand up slowly and stretch gently.

Warm wishes,

Dan