Recently a colleague forwarded an article from
Forbes titled "How Successful People Stay Calm".
The article had the requisite graph of performance plotted against stress and then listed 10 strategies for staying calm.
Coming in at #9 was breathing. Yes, that is right,
Forbes discussed the benefit of breath and staying calm in an article about success. Wowza!
So I am going to give a bit more detail on a way you can incorporate a calming breath at work, at home, pretty much anywhere.
1. If you can, go into a quiet space. Once you get the hang of this the quiet space may not matter as much.
2. Notice your breath, is the inhale longer or the exhale longer? Is there a pause at either end?
3. Now begin to count as you inhale, a steady moderate count will do just fine. It may feel a bit slow at first and that is OK, just notice it and stay with it.
4. Then count the exhale at the same speed as the inhale, but, let the exhale be longer than the inhale.
Different sources offer different counts. I suggest, at the start, just getting used to having a full inhale and exhale with the exhale taking longer than the in breath. Once you are familiar with that, then other details can be brought into play.
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