The following was initially published by Health Promotion England in their “The Health Guide”:
Learn to recognise when your muscles are tensed – this is a sign of stress. This simple breathing exercise may help you to combat stressful moments in your life:
- Sit with your feet flat on the floor, or lie in a comfortable and supported position. Rest your hands lightly on your thighs
- Breathe slowly and deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth. If you are breathing correctly your stomach, not your chest, should rise and at the start of each breath.
- As you breathe, gradually drop your shoulders and relax your hands. Make sure your teeth are not tightly clenched.
Calm, controlled breathing helps to release muscular tension and relieve stress.
Adopt this breathing technique when training and this will allow your body to stay calm and relaxed. Training your forms is ideal for practicing this but in time you should be able to quickly bring your focus back to breathing whenever you are feeling any pressure.
Breathing is a fundamental part of living, impaired breathing doesn’t allow us to function at our optimum and without it, we cease to function at all.
However, how often do you think about breathing?
In the majority of cases, the answer to this question is, not very often!
But, this should not be the case, and adopting different breathing techniques is a way of bringing focus to this important function.
There are many techniques that can be used to achieve different results, the above being just one. At the very least allow yourself time to bring focus to your breathing, if only for a few moments.
