Do you or your loved ones live with anxiety? When anxiety shows up, it often can leave a sense of breathlessness or a feeling like you can’t catch your breath. This can be very uncomfortable and even more anxiety-provoking.
This post is the second in a series of breathing exercises to try when you feel anxious. This particular technique is called Lazy Eight Breathing that supports mindful breathing with intention. This helps calm the nervous systems and reduces the distressing symptoms of the fight, flight, or freeze response that happens when anxiety is kicked into high gear. You can do this with your kids, yourself, or your family and it only needs to take a few minutes a day.
Sometimes you need a visual to help teach mindful breathing. You can trace this visual included in this post with your fingers or follow it with your eyes.
Mindful Breathing has been proven by loads of research to relieve anxiety. It also has a few more benefits which I have included here:
-Reduce stress and alleviate the symptoms of anxiety
-Help stop and reduce the amount of time in a panic or anxiety attack
-Calm the nervous system
-Relieve pain
-Imrove sleep
-Stimulates the lymphatic system (which helps detoxify the body)
-Lowers blood pressure
-Improves immune system functioning
Parents you may find that incorporating mindful minutes into your kid’s bedtime routine is an easier way to start building this healthy habit into your family’s daily routine.
As always, if you made it this far, thanks for spending your valuable time reading this post!
Be Well,
Dr. G
