Breathing exercises for anxiety. Please help with clarification

[kremling]

I suffer from a constant state of anxiety and have been researching breathing exercises. I have read about some of them as well as been told one by a counsellor.

From what i've tried so far its given me a spark of hope that they could really help. I think its the best place to start with curing my anxiety disorder.

Some of my symptoms are: Constant tightness in my throat, chest, and stomach, inability to sleep, body tensing, and poor concentration.

Im going to separate my questions to make it easier.

1. The first problem I've come across is conflicting information. I have read that deep breathing can be bad for you and increase your anxiety but most breathing exercises imply deep breathing I think.

Iv'e also read that breathing through your mouth is bad for you but a counsellor taught me a breathing exercise that soley used mouth breathing so Im confused about that.

Im guessing nasal breathing is better though since Im not sure what purpus the nose would have it not for that.

2. A very common breathing exercise Ive read about online says to breath in through the nose and exhale through the mouth, does anyone have any experience with this?

Has anyone out there cured their anxiety disorder with any kind of breathing exercises or something similar?

3. Is there any danger of using any of the breathing techniques out there? Can anyone offer some advice or tips on doing them right?

Can you recommend a good one to start with? Or what is the best way to start curing an anxiety disorder?

[AsktheAges]

I find that square breathing is helpful to calm down and relax. (Look up "How to Do Four-Square Breathing on ehow. I can't post links.)

Making a regular practice of diaphragmatic breathing is also really good imo. (Look this up on Wikipedia.) While the Wiki page says to breathe out through pursed lips, I always breathe through my nose. I don't really see a reason to breathe with the mouth.

[PanicCured]

There are only 2 breathing techniques I recommend for anxiety.

1) Buteyko

Learn Buteyko breathing exercises. Learn to do reduced breathing exercises.

Why?

O2 in your blood cells is carried to your cells. What causes them to be released is the amount of CO2 in the blood celles. They are released by the partial pressure of CO2. When one hyperventilates or overbreathes such as in anxiety and stress, what happens is too much CO2 is released. Then less CO2 is in the blood, causing less O2 to be released to your cells and brain. Then you get light headed. This causes the respiratory centers in your brain to try and get you to slow down your breathing, then you feel you can't breathe. This triggers anxiety which triggers more over breathing which triggers more anxiety, ad infinitum. Your respiratory centers then get tuned to a very high state.

The way to fix this is to reduce breathing to reset the respiratory centers and to understand more breathing equals less oxygen to your body. You need to just breathe the right amount, not too much, not too little. It depends on your metabolic rate. A slight offset in the CO2/O2 balance can cause all kinds of symptoms. But since you most likely have fallen into bad breathing habits, you need to do some practicing to reset your body. Also, breathing through the nose is best, as it doesn't bring in too much O2, offsetting the CO2. The more you exercise the more you should be breathing though. Obviously you don't sprint and reduce breathing. It needs to match your metabolism and level of exertion. It needs to match your level of activity.

Within days of reading Patrick McKwown's Anxiety Buteyko breathing book and using his CD, and practicing the techniques, my panic disorder reduced tremendously! Understanding that breathing more and more, deeper and deeper as I was doing, was making all my symptoms worse. That alone was a huge revelation to me. I do not sell his book or make money off it in any way. Just honestly one of the major tools that helped get me better. Anxiety Free: Stop Worrying and Quieten the Mind was the name and the CD I listened to multiple times a day. It's too complicated to explain it all here. Just find a way to learn Buteyko breathing.

People that tell you to breathe more to get more oxygen don't understand physiology. Like I said though, you breathe more the more exertion you do. At rest it's different.

2) Misogi breathing technique

This is a way to increase the parasympathetic nervous system and decrease the sympathetic nervous system. Breathe very slow very deep through the nose, then you kind of tighten the throat to make this Darth Vader kind of noise and release very very slowly the outbreath through the mouth, it takes a long time to get rid of all the air. By exhaling incredibly slow, you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system which is like the brakes for the adrenaline. Similar to Buteyko, you really are breathing less oxygen, when you add it up, so it isn't overbreathing. What you are doing though is exhaling very long stimulating the calming side of the nervous system.

I hope this post motivates people to explore these 2 wonderful techniques further.

Good luck!

[kremling]

Thanks for the replies. Ive been looking into Buteyko the last few days and it seems interesting.

So far I got my feet and hands to warm up by using it a bit.

Still having trouble sustaining the practice though because of my concentration.

If anyone out there has any tips or info, of has gone through this before please send me a message.

[Brad72]

The thing with anxiety is that you start to shallow breathe in response /preparation to the perceived threat which in turn alter the chemicals ready for flight or fright. This style of breathing is what makes you feel terrible. Usually what happens is that you don't empty your lungs fully and therefore get that can't breath feeling.

I practiced breathing my breathing technique every hour because I had to retrain my anxiety body how to breath properly again. I breath out fully empting my lungs, then let my lungs fill naturally 3 times whist focusing on my breath. I then do the same 3 cycles whilst observing my thoughts (do not judge your thoughts). Then again whilst observing my thoughts and noticing my surroundings and bodily sensations (sounds, etc). This technique helps with grounding yourself to the here and now and also to breath correctly again.

In the beginning you may feel a bit dizzy which is normal because your body is not used to breathing correctly but with practice is just becomes natural. I now do it for 20 minutes at a time. Look up mindfulness and breathing for more info.

[Chiliphil1]

There are a couple of techniques that I have found, they are not meant for anxiety per se but they do work. First Try the 4 7 8 technique, you breathe in through your nose very deep breath make sure you breath in with your stomach that way you fill your lungs completely, breathe in for 4 seconds, hold you breath for 7 seconds, then blow out through your mouth, act like you are blowing through a straw breathe out for 8 seconds and make sure you get all of the air out of your lungs, sit without breathing for a bit between, ( no specific count) just a couple seconds and repeat. The second part is to imagine when you are breathing in that you are inhaling fog and when you are holding your breath imagine the fog circulating through your body to all your extremities and when you breathe out image all the fog leaving your body. You will want to start doing this 10-12 times in a row, once you are comfortable with that you can increase the number of times you do it, eventually you will want to work up to about 25 times. Be careful when doing this because as someone said above breathing properly can make you dizzy at first, so don't over do it if you feel faint or feel like you can't do it then stop. Do as many as you can safely and work yourself up slowly.