Meditation to relax breathing exercise that can coax your body into calming down
When we’re anxious and stressed-out, we tend to breathe in a shallow and rapid manner – rapid heartbeat, trembling, clammy hands, or even dizziness.
A Mindfulness of breathing meditation practice can help you to relax and reduce stress. It is also a very powerful and effective foundation for cultivating mindfulness in your everyday life.
Correct Breathing for relaxing and reducing stress
When meditating, it is essential to try to remember to breathe correctly. And better yet, try and make this into a habit so that your breathing is better during your waking day as well.
Many people don’t know how to breathe well and are unintentionally breathing most of the time incorrectly.
When we are stressed, we breathe more quickly and not as deeply. But likewise, when we breathe more rapidly and not as deeply, we become more stressed.
Before you start the 3-Minute Breath Meditation to relax, take both hands and place one on your belly and one on your chest. Now breathe normally. Which hand is moving first? Is it the hand on your chest or the hand on your stomach?
For most people, the answer is the chest. But to be optimally healthy, it should be the belly. When we’re young children, this is how we breathe and how animals breathe.
Belly breathing means relaxing your abdominal muscles, opening up your abdominal cavity, and allowing your diaphragm to drop into that space. This then creates more room for the lungs, which will automatically inflate as they enlarge. You then bring your chest in and open that up to take in even more oxygen. As a result, you breathe a lot more deeply. This oxygenates your body, calms your heart rate, and helps you to feel less stressed.
Now, listen to the meditation to relax or discover a few more tips on getting started with meditation.
How to Get Started With Meditation
The easiest way to get started if you’re a beginner is to try guided meditation like this one. Guided meditation means using a pre-recorded script that will talk you through everything you must do at any given stage.
Essentially, this helps direct your attention and show you what you need to reflect on or pay attention to at any given time.
Learning to meditate and making it a part of your life are two very different things. And you may find it challenging to adopt this new behavior in a meaningful way. Read this article where I share 4 essential tips for how to meditate successfully with ease.
Looking for more Mindfulness practices that can help you develop a stress-reducing routine?
Join me inside the Stress Breather Workshop Experience
The Stress Breather Workshop
A guided, curated experience to help you start building a stress-reducing routine you can practice with minimal time and during everyday activities. Inside you will discover how you can develop healthy stress management and peace of mind.
During our time together, we’ll also perform three Stress Breather activities to make it easy for you to start developing a daily Mindfulness routine if you choose to do so.
