This post is devoted to coherent breathing. Now, this is a great tool for people working with anxiety, people who are looking for anxiety therapy. These are tools that you can bring into your own daily practice, your own daily life, to help yourself and to help your nervous system.
So, coherent breathing, if you haven't heard of it yet, it's something I used to teach. If you took yoga with me, I would talk about it as the one to one, 1:1 breathing.
Coherent therapy is inhaling for a count of five and a half to six counts and exhaling to a count of five and a half to six. What we're looking at is about six breaths per minute. That's going to put you in your optimal zone in terms of your nervous system.
Coherent Breathing for a calmer mind and body.
That's where your brain, your heart, and your metabolism are operating synchronously and kind of in that like beautiful optimal zone, or sweet spot. When you are in your sweet spot, you are not getting taken over by anxiety, or plowed down by depression, you’re able to be creative, have clear thinking and clarity.
Clarity, is like gold.
Now, I told you I'd say something about heart rate variability, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Heart rate variability is the amount of variability between heartbeats and what it measures is how well your nervous system and your heart deal with change and variation.
So people with a larger higher heart rate variability, tend to adapt to variation in temperature, in sound, in, in inputs, in stress. This is an example where physical fitness and mental fitness correlates so deeply - when you exercise and flex your heart – you are also flexing and enhancing your emotional capacities.
When we go from resting to a cardio workout and then back to resting - this effort is creating greater heart rate variability, and will increase your heart rate variability and that creates resiliency, adaptability, strength on a physical level, which also translates to an emotional capacity as well.
So here's the practice. It's five and a half seconds in five and a half seconds out. We're going to practice for one minute. I'm going to count here. So go ahead and just get your body ready for a little bit of focused attention. I am seated and my spine is nice and long, and, you know, chin kind of drops a little towards the chest, and just take a couple of casual breaths in and out, just priming the pump. Great. And in a second we'll start, and I'll count, and then I'll stop counting halfway through so that you can find your own rhythm with it.
I’ll count up to five and then pause for the half second, and then down from five, down from five is the exhale.
Up to five is the inhale. Trust yourself, deep breath in and out.
And we begin -
Inhale
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Exhale,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Inhaling,
2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Breath. Inhale,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Exhale,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Last three. Inhale,
exhale.
We'll do one more deep breath in.
Okay. And then just return to breath as usual normal.
And notice internally what's slowed down a little bit.
I'm definitely more present in this moment. I'm more landed in my body and my brain, my thinking's a little more clear and I feel a little happier. I can feel a little lift. Can you feel that? The best way to practice this is for one minute, up to five minutes. You can practice it once a day, ideally two or three times a day.
You can set your timer to remind you to practice. It’s an excellent thing to do right before bed for sleeping.
Set your timer, for one minute or five minutes. Again, get in that six breaths per minute range.
If you're breathing 11, 12, 13, some people up to 21 breaths per minute, you know you're in a hyper activated state, a sympathetic state of mind.
After engaging this breath, you will likely feel clearer, have the capacity to make better decisions. And possibly even feel happier with yourself. How can I help you if you don't practice?
So thank you for staying tuned. Again, please share this with friends, family, colleagues, loved ones – those you think will benefit from this practice.
If you are interested in finding out if EMDR therapy or an EMDR intensive is right for you, feel free to contact me when you are ready.