Anxiety Relaxation Techniques with Breathing Exercises

Yoga comes as a rescue with simple exercises in dealing stress by “Pranayama” and practicing “Nispandh-Bhava” an exercise that helps to develop compassion and attitude of letting-go. It teaches you to forgive and forget.

It is prudent to take help from the psychiatrist, counselors and physician in extreme cases of mental unbalance and depression. In serious cases, it is mandatory for the patient to be assessed by qualified specialists and practitioners. 

Breathe deeply and slowly when you are stressed.  By force of habit your mind will go astray very often. Be patient and the pranayama asana magic will work. When the body gets excited and provoked due to such reactions, the natural rhythm of breathing is disturbed; the turbulence causes the breathing to become uneven.

The upheavals causes stress in the body and the reactions and sensations that surface on the body are due to the signals from mind. If you can calm breath and do not react to bodily sensation, your blood pressure and heart beats will not rise, thus controlling the mind and checking the provocations. These results in checking the disease with breathing exercises for stress as you must know that most of the diseases are psychosomatic – which means “mind generated”.

Not everyone knows that yoga is just not about healthy body, it is about a healthy mind in a healthy body. Why?  Because - our body and mind are closely related. Remember Einstein’s theory about “Mind and Matter”, mass can be converted to energy by E =mc^2. Sometimes it is difficult to perceive and understand the Mind. What is mind after all? It isn’t the physical aspect of brain, it is about energy and the vibration, for the brain is dead without mind (the life).  So the activity of brain is associated with thoughts and is very closely related to body. A depressed body is unhealthy and causes the mind to take the stress and in turn it becomes ill and unhealthy too.

Yoga and breathing exercises for stress function as a complementary therapy and not as a preventive therapy while dealing with ailments of body and mind. Depression, Anxiety attacks, nervousness are a result of fear of failure, stressful conditions and environment and can originate due to genetic reasons and family heredity. Each person is an island of emotions, very distinct from other and the behavior patterns due to social and environmental difference can trigger different symptoms and illness.

Breathing exercises for stress can start from the moment you wake up, and start your day.  You can be conscious of your breath once you get up, by focusing on the natural breath or do “Anulom-Vilom” breathing on your cot in a sitting posture with the back straight. Best way is not to lean on the pillow, but if you have to lean on it do it with the spinal cord straight.

Once you rise up from the bed, use a yoga mat after finishing your daily chores to do yoga asanas. Select a healthy location with pleasant wind and sun to do your morning pranayama asana.

Learning to having the right attitude towards, oneself, accepting oneself and the consequences of environment, culture, ethics and social responsibilities is the first step towards caring for your body and mind. The next step is to take care of your body through diet and ‘Yoga asanas”.  The eight fold path that Buddha teaches with infinite compassion is the foundation for controlling the mind through breathing exercises and rising above one’s reactive nature. Instead of becoming passive or reactive, Ana-Pana teaches us to be active in reasoning and then taking decision with conscious mind with unbiased views.

Depression is an illness, which comes as a real threat for so many of us in our life-time in so many ‘Avatars’ and manifestations.  There is not one soul in this universe who has not experienced helplessness, homelessness and worthlessness at some or other time. Depression in its extreme manifestation can be very deadly and fatal with self destruction such as suicide. Since body action is mind driven, if you can somehow control your mind through breathing exercises you can easily tackle depression.