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 this Simple Grounding Technique to Help with Dissociation

Image by David Pisnoy

Dissociation is one of the most confusing, disturbing and often frightening experiences we can have. It is also extremely common – especially, but not only, if you are a trauma survivor. When explaining dissociation to my clients, I often use the analogy of a circuit breaker.

So think about a circuit breaker, which is designed to deal with sudden surges of electricity. When there is a surge, the switches get tripped, shutting down the electrical circuit and protecting all of your devices (kettle, toaster, computer, etc) from burning out.

That’s how dissociation works in your brain. If you experience something completely overwhelming, like any kind of trauma, your brain flips a few switches (metaphorically) and shuts down various circuits, to protect you from lasting damage. At the time of the trauma, this is a helpful, adaptive and potentially lifesaving strategy.

Imagine you are in a bad car crash. If you are injured, your brain flips those switches to, for example, disconnect you from the physical pain in your body. This might help you survive, by allowing you to escape the crash site. Or just to cope with the experience, by protecting you from the pain until you’re in hospital and can get treatment. As with so many of the coping strategies we use for any kind of traumatic experience, this is a good, healthy, protective thing to do.

When dissociation is not helpful

The problem with dissociation is that, over time, it becomes an unconscious and habitual response. Especially if you are a trauma survivor, with a heightened sensitivity to anything that feels scary or threatening, you might dissociate on a daily, or even hourly basis. And it’s clearly not helpful to find parts of your brain shutting down if you are driving a car, in a meeting or speaking to your child’s teacher at school.

A common dissociative experience is when your prefrontal cortex (PFC), or ‘thinking brain’, shuts down. That’s why your mind goes blank when you feel anxious, because anxiety signals threat, so your brain triggers the fight-flight-freeze response to help you survive, and shuts down your (relatively slow, overthinking) PFC so you can act, fast. This is a dissociative response, which can be scary and confusing when the only threat is that teacher telling you that your daughter is a bit naughty in class.

Try this grounding technique

Mindfulness is a wonderful skill, for many reasons, but it’s especially helpful if you’re prone to dissociation. It will help you bring the PFC online; realise that you are here, now and not there, then; and bring you back to the present, to your body, to the safe place you currently inhabit – not the scary memories you might be stuck in when you experience trauma-related dissociation.

1. You can use any of your five senses to help ground you in the present moment, but this technique involves sight. Look around the room and pick three objects (for example, a painting, plant and book). Focus all of your attention on each one in turn, describing them in as much detail as you can.

2. With the painting, that might be something like, ‘I see a large painting in a silver frame. It’s a rectangle, about two feet wide by four feet long. The painting is of a woman with a small dog on her lap. I can see strong greens and reds in the woman’s dress; and the dog is a small pug, with a shiny, dark-grey coat.’

3. Keep going, finding as much detail as possible (for this exercise, it’s never too much) and then do the same for the plant and the book.

4. After you have described all three objects, notice whether you feel more mindful and present – in your body, mind and moment-to-moment experience. I’m confident that you will be at least a bit more present, but if you still feel a bit spacey or weird pick another three objects and repeat the exercise. Again, check on your phyiscal and mental state – this should help you feel calmer, more grounded and in your body.

I really hope this helps. As ever, when offering you these techniques as part of my Heal Your Trauma project, I want to stress that if you are a trauma survivor, you will need the help of a skilled, trauma-informed professional. And if so, use these techniques alongside, rather than instead of, your treatment.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Listen to this grounding technique on Insight Timer