I once attended a course on how to better deal with change and stressful situations. During the workshop, the facilitator called for a volunteer to come to the front of the room and speak about a significantly challenge experience in their life. A sensor was attached to the volunteer’s finger which monitored his heart-rate and displayed it on the large screen at the front of the room.
The volunteer’s pulse increased slightly at this point, a natural outcome of being on public display. The facilitator then proceeded to ask a few questions about the stressful situation the volunteer wished to share.
The volunteer spoke about a friend, recently diagnosed with Stage Four cancer and given three months to live. As he spoke, his voice started trembling and before long he broke down and began sobbing uncontrollably. On the screen, the line representing his pulse spiked, increasing from around sixty to more than one hundred and thirty.
The facilitator then changed tack, inviting the volunteer to commence some breathing exercises. He breathed in deeply, held his breath a moment, and exhaled slowly. After just a few seconds of this his pulse started dropping. Within a minute it had reduced to a level lower than when the sensor was first attached to his finger. At the same time his sobbing stopped and his demeanour changed. Although solemn, he became perfectly calm.
This amazing transformation came about through the power of mindful breathing.
Although we breathe thousands of breaths every day, most of us remain consciously unaware of the vast majority of our breaths. I have found that taking the time to focus on my breathing can lead to massive improvements in my outlook and perspective.
There are a few situations when I find it helpful to breathe mindfully.
The first is any time I begin feeling stressed or anxious. Feelings of stress and anxiety come about because the mammalian part of our brain has detected some kind of threat and it is releasing cortisol (also known as the stress hormone) to alert our body to take some action. However, the release of cortisol often occurs in greater proportion than a modern threat warrants. For example, fear of social exclusion was a risk to the survival of our mammal forebears who could not survive alone in the pre-historic world and so our brain evolved a particular response whenever the threat of social exclusion arose. However, our brain will make the same response when a fear of social exclusion arises today because of a trivial reason such as having chosen to dress casually when everyone else is in formal wear — although this is clearly not a survival risk.
In this scenario, the act of taking deep breathes sends a signal to our brain that the emergency may not be such a concern, and it gives our brain’s cortex — the higher order decision making function — the opportunity to logically analyse the situation and make an appropriate response. The response can be as simple as thinking to yourself: “I see my old friend, the mammalian part of my brain has detected a potential survival threat … I’m glad to have that part of my brain because I wouldn’t exist today if my ancestors had not been able to rely on it in the past … but for the moment, I can ignore what it’s saying.”
I have found this sort of thought process helps me put some stressful situations into perspective and hence fashion an appropriate response. The sheer act of breathing mindfully whilst I am thinking these thoughts also sends a signal to my brain that things can’t be too bad if I am taking the time to breathe slowly, and hence that also reduces the symptoms of stress, in a manner similar to what the volunteer experienced. However, if our brain does not get the space to do this and we remain in survival mode, we may be limited to a choice between freeze, fight or flight with anxiety levels remaining high.
The second time I find it helpful to breathe mindfully is at a set time every day. This can be for a period as short as one to three minutes. If you can do it at the same time every day, it helps you establish it as a habit. I do it for a few minutes when I sit down on the train every morning. The act of practicing mindful breathing regularly helps me feel calm and peaceful. The approach I take on the train is:
- Sit in a comfortable and upright position, being conscious to establish good posture. To do this, I like to focus on holding my back upright, pulling my shoulders back, and consciously lifting my head high. I also place my feet squarely on the ground.
- Place my hands comfortably on my lap.
- Close my eyes.
- Focus my consciousness on the tip of my nose.
- Breathe in slowly through my nose, observing the breath and feeling the air move over the tip of my nose.
- Hold the breath for a second or two.
- Breathe out slowly, again, observing the air moving past the tip of my nose.
- Continue the process for at least a minute.
- If I find my attention moving away from the tip of my nose, I gently return my focus to this point.
Performing this practice on a daily basis has been shown to open new neural paths in our cortex after only a month or so. Once this has happened, it becomes easy and natural for you to practice mindful breathing anywhere and anytime, so you may actually find yourself doing it multiple times every day. In addition to helping me feel calm and peaceful at the time I practice the mindful breathing, I find it also has a longer-lasting effect and helps me feel calm or restore calm more easily over the course of the day.
Breathing is always helpful when I have nerves prior to a significant event. The technique I try to adopt when this occurs is:
- Breathe mindfully, taking note of what I see and feel. If I have the time and space to adopt a power pose I will do that as well.
- Acknowledge that my nerves are there, as they almost always are before I do anything significant that I care about.
- Turn my attention to the task at hand and focus on what I need to do next or mentally rehearse a key step.
In adopting this course of action, I am not trying to pretend that nerves don’t exist — in fact I explicitly acknowledge them. But through my breathing, I try to let my cortex take control so that I can remind myself that nerves are always there for a significant event, they haven’t stopped me succeeding in the past, and they probably won’t stop me this time. Having taken the time to acknowledge this, I can then use my cortex to do something constructive to prepare.
I have found mindful breathing to be of great assistance in calming me down and helping me to make good choices, particularly if I am stressed, anxious, angry or nervous. The practice that makes it more likely that I will think to do this whenever a situation like this arises is taking the time to carry out mindful breathing on a daily basis. This has helped my brain get used to carrying out the process, and hence, makes it more likely that my brain will be able to adopt this technique in a crunch situation. The daily application of mindful breathing doesn’t need to take much time — you can start with a minute a day. Just be sure to identify a trigger which will enable you to do this on a daily basis for four to six weeks so that the habit becomes established.
To learn more about this life hack:
- You can read more about how to establish a new habit here.
- Listen to Shaun McCambridge interview Jonah Oliver for some great tips on how to perform when under pressure.
- Read Physical Intelligence by Patricia Peyton.
- Read Habits of a Healthy Brain by Loretta Graziano Breuning.
