How breath meditation can help relieve stress

Everyone has moments when they go on overload. Our levels of stress and anxiety shoot up so high that we’re rendered inoperative. Worse yet, we may not realize how compromised we’ve become by this acute episode of stress and go ahead and make decisions that we’ll later regret.

The objective is to calm oneself sufficiently and quickly enough so as to be able to better handle the current stressors and to settle ourselves internally enough to make good decisions quickly.

The following technique, known most commonly as breath meditation or breath relaxation, is a helpful and easily accessible technique for teens and adults in moments of unreasonable stress.

The process is pretty straight forward.

First, find a place where you can sit, uninterrupted, for at least a few minutes. You don’t need to sit in a lotus position on a cushion — it can be anywhere and on anything. What you need is a room where you can be alone or even a toilet stall — just somewhere where you’re likely to be left alone for a few minutes. Once there, sit up straight, with your feet planted flatly on the floor or ground, your back straight with your butt squarely placed and your arms rested on your thighs. Then, here’s what you do.

Close your eyes and take several deep breaths — breathing in deeply through your nose and exhaling as slowly as you can manage. (Pursing your lips during the exhale helps a lot.) This simple process of managing your breathing will, within a minute or two, slow both your heartbeat and respiration. It can also mute thoughts as one’s total attention is taken up by the breathing. It’s hard the first time, but gets easier with practice.

Focus on the part of your body where you feel the tension and stress most acutely. Breath is quite powerful and can be used to actually exhale tension from the body. This basic technique has been used successfully in Asia for thousands of years and works equally well in the West. Exhale slowly while focusing on exhaling the tension out of its home in your body. It may take a series of breaths to accomplish it, but it will work for most people most of the time. To maximize the likelihood of success, you must try to clear your mind of all other thoughts, ideas, concerns or memories, and concentrate only on controlling the flow of your breath and the exhaling of the tension from a specific body part.

As time allows, begin to identify each section of your body and repeat the breathing exercise for each part — because each part carries some of the tension. One piece at a time, you can relax your entire self in this way.

This is, obviously, an oversimplification but a useful one. I’ve used the technique successfully with myself as well as with others. The beauty of it is that it requires no special equipment, takes only a few minutes and relaxes people rather quickly. After five minutes of doing it, your heart rate and breathing will have slowed considerably, and you will be in a far better condition to make decisions.