Just Relax... Would Ya!

Let’s be real, that statement doesn’t usually help, but let me give you something that does. 

If possible, stop where you are, close your eyes and begin to take some breaths in your nose and out your mouth.  

Relax your shoulders, feel your feet on the ground, the back of your legs on the seat and just feel the breath coming in your nose and out through your lips. 

See if you can feel the warmth of your breath as it passes through your nostrils and enters your lungs. As the breath exits your mouth bring your awareness to how the breath feels as it passes through the inside of your lips. 

Let’s check in: 

This is going to sound a little crazy, but out loud just answer these questions:

-How are you feeling, emotionally? 

-What’s happening inside of you body, sensationally?

-How is your mind feeling?

Now, I want you to make the exhale a little bit longer than your inhale. Think about your lips being soft as you exhale, like you’re about to give your sweetie a soft kiss . 

Now that we have created the awareness of your breath, let’s bring some attention to where the breath is going in your torso.  

Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your upper chest.  As you inhale, see if you can expand your ribcage 360 degrees around as well as expanding the belly.  The upper chest should stay fairly still but may move a little. We want to keep the upper chest and the shoulders from rising as we are breathing (this will create a larger stress response, yep the way you breathe can actually be exacerbating your stress )

Now you have brought more awareness to the breath and the body let’s create some coherence, a little more connection.  You are now going to match the length of the inhale and the exhale. 

You can try a 3 seconds in, 3 seconds out, or you can try 4 or 5 or even 6.  The more we can slow down our breath the more we can begin to down-regulate our often overly regulated nervous system.  

Spend the next 5 minutes in this coherent breath pattern.  Or if you’re enjoying the longer exhale you can try to double your exhale, a 3 second inhale will then be a 6 second exhale, or 4 and 8 and so on as your carbon dioxide tolerance (which is a direct correlation to stress tolerance ) increases. 

Here’s the thing I could give you hundreds of different breath combos but we are going to start really simple here. Using either of these a few times a day will radically change your life…but I will warn you, once you start thinking about your breath it will invade all areas of your life . 

Here’s a QUICK daily practice guide:

Morning: 5 minutes of coherence breath

Afternoon: 5 minutes of coherence breath

Evening: 5 minutes of shorter inhales and longer exhales. 

THEN, if things go a little wonky in your day, the kids are going cray, someone cuts you off in traffic, your boss tosses something else on your plate, you’re stressing out about an upcoming meeting, you just had an argument with a loved one…USE THE TOOLS ABOVE. 

You don’t have to stop for 5 minutes after the incident but just stop for a minute or walk around and just lengthen the exhale or match the in with the out and experience how quickly your nervous system regulates itself.  

You can read all the self help books you want, hire that life coach, continue that self discovery journey, go to the gym to blow off steam, but without the breath you are missing the KEY to it all. 

I know this seems simple but if you can implement just these small changes daily, the impact will be exponential, the ripple, like a drop of water.  That’s why we call it dropgym, that small drop effects every area of your life. 

Email lu@dropgym.com if you have any questions!