Remember to breeeeeathe!

Believe it or not a lot of people forget to breathe properly when they get stressed or anxious. It must be because we go into the 'flight or fight' response. That's a left over from cave man and woman days when life was very much about survival. If you were walking along in your leopard skin outfit (maybe saber tooth tiger matching top and bottoms??!!) and some mean beast (no not your partner - more like a woolly mammoth!) came along, there was a strong tenedency to go "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" and run - or fight.

When that happened our autonomic nervous system kicked in, often without us knowing and all sorts of things happened to our body, like our eyes focused more on the object of danger. When the flight or fight response kicks in we also don't concentrate on things around us as much. The blood starts to go to our legs and arms and less so to our stomach (not much point in digesting food with imminent death in sight!) and of course our breathing changes to shallow, short breaths. A few other things change aswell but I guess you get the message.

Of course now days there's not too many woolly mammoths roaming the street (well none really if you really needed to know), so this left over protection device tends to react to more mundane things like a bit of stress or anxiety. Not that I'm trying to minimise stress or anxiety but it's not quite like trying to avoid the jaws of a monster! But then again may be it does feel that way sometimes!

The point of this post is to remind ourselves to breathe and recognise what is going on with our body at these times. It's a perfectly normal thing and can be overcome by observing. You know observing is a powerful thing. So often we are caught up in being us! We are there, totally focused, deep in the experience, which is great if it's a very pleasurable experience like eating chocolate - ha ha! But a handy hint when things are not so good is to become the observer. Recognise the signs of what is happening, especially with our bodies (faster heart rate, sweating, shallow breathing etc) and then take action. That includes breeeeeeathing. Short circuit the flight or fight process by doing something like breathing differently. Deep breath in, hold it for a second, then breathe out. For me the magic number seems to be 20. I can never seem to get to 20! At around maybe 10 to 13 I am much calmer. So count each breath, make the breaths long and deep, and observe!