A Mindful Breathing Exercise to help with Anxiety
To begin, lie down comfortably on your back and slowly close your eyes. Pay attention to how your breath occurs naturally, without even thinking about. Allow yourself to sink into the floor or furniture.
Place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly. In your mind’s eye, imagine a balloon behind your belly button gently filling with air as you inhale and emptying as you exhale. Invite your belly to relax.
Without trying to control or force your breathing in any way, allowing it to guide you, notice, perhaps, that your breathing becomes slower and deeper. When your breathing deepens, lengthens, and slows, your belly gently rises. and falls, expands and collapses.
In this smooth, rhythmic flow, notice, perhaps, if your hand on your belly moves more than your hand on your chest. This tells you if your breathing is passing past your chest and moving your diaphragm muscle downward, causing your belly to move up and down. If there is no difference between the movement of your hands, no worries. Over time, as you follow your breath with relaxed attention, your breathing slows down and deepens on its own to its natural state.
Gently lower your hands and arms to the sides. Relax.
Now, imagine floating on an air mattress in the ocean on a hot sunny day. The gentle waves of the ocean: as you inhale your belly rises slowly, as if you are carried on the rising slope of a wave, as you exhale your belly slowly sinks, as you descend from it other side of the wave.
Imagining riding a wave with each breath, take a few moments to notice how you feel. Imagine the ocean getting a little choppy. For a short while, let your breath move only in your chest, so that your breathing is short, shallow, and faster, matching the movement of those little shorter, faster waves. Take a moment to notice your feelings while you are engaged in chest breathing.
Imagine the waves returning to their earlier gentle, slow movements as you invite your breath to slow down and deepen. As you breathe in fully and freely with abdominal breathing, your stomach rises on the slope of the inhale and descends on the slope of the exhale.
As you breathe this way, take a moment to observe your emotional state. When you are ready to leave the ocean, slowly open your mind. Could you feel a difference between these two states? If not, don’t worry. Give this exercise more time or come back to it later.
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