I heard this joke a long time ago; “A blonde went into a beauty salon for a haircut. As she sat down at the stylists chair, the stylist noticed she had headphones on. ‘Mam, please remove your headphones’ he asked. To which the blonde replied, ‘I can’t, I’ll die.’ ‘You must remove the headphones for me to give you a haircut, they’ll be in the way.’ the hairdresser insisted. ‘Seriously, I can’t take them off! I will die!’ Exclaimed the blonde. Frustrated over her lack of cooperation, the hairdresser yanked off her headphones. Within a moments time, the blonde fell over-dead! The hairdresser out of his curiosity put the headphones to his ear; “Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.” was repeated over and over. Cute. But sometimes I think I need to have that recording playing repeatedly in my ear!

There are times I get overwhelmed, stressed out, panicky and I feel like I can’t even catch my breath. It’s an anxiety attack that I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in. That’s when I have to stop. I have to breathe. I have a breathing technique I employee that helps me catch my breath and slow down and calm down that I want to share. It’s a form of what some may call meditation.

Step one; take a long, deep cleansing breath through your nose and immediately exhale it all.

Step two; take a long, deep breath through your nose-while doing this think to yourself “positive, positive, positive-hold your breath for a second or two. With your mouth open-exhale completely, repeating the thought “negative, negative, negative”. Repeat this 3 or 4 times.

Step three; repeat step two, but instead of repeating the thought “positive”on your inhalation, replace is with what you want to manifest-for example it could be “peace”, “calm”, “relax”, “health”, whatever. On the exhalation replace “negative” with specifically what your feeling; “anger”, “fear”, “worry”, “sickness”, whatever applies. Repeat this 3 or 4 times.

Of course you can use this as many times throughout the day as needed and it can be done anywhere and has no bad side effects–as long as you are not hyper-ventilating! I’ve discovered this works best when I can be in a quiet place, although sometimes at the moment that may not always be possible. At the end of a tough day I’ve found I can do this in the bathtub with my ears under water so all I can hear is my own heartbeat–that’s a wonderfully “cleansing” (in more ways than one) experience! Give it a try!

This post was submitted by Brenda.