Breathe deeply...
One of the most effective ways of regulating our energy levels, refocus erratic or distracting thoughts, and calm heightened emotions is by simply focusing on our breath.
When we are about to perform our body goes into what is known as “fight-flight-freeze” mode. You’ve probably heard of this before, but it’s a response that originates from way back when we were all roaming around the earth in loincloths and being chased about by sabre-toothed tigers. Sound like fun? Not so if you were about to be eaten up by one of those bad boys!
Our response to the impending danger is to get ready to fight the predator, get the heck outta there and run, or pretend to ‘play dead’ and hope it’s a nice kitty that has already had its lunch – probably not the best move under the circumstances!
Because our body is about to do some serious fighting or running (or playing dead), it has to kick into gear in a few ways in order to increase the amount of energy we’re going to expend. For fighting and flighting, our sympathetic nervous system goes into overload, and various neurochemicals are released around the body, namely adrenalin, noradrenalin, cortisol, and a few other ones for good measure. This activates our body for greater strength and energy to give us the best possible chance of staying alive and therefore contributing to the continuation of the human race.
As this whole process obviously messes around with our body, mind, emotions, and behaviours a fair bit, a great way to counter-balance this is learning how to breathe diaphragmatically.
Start by sitting down comfortably on a chair, and place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. Now take a slow, deep breath in through your nose, breathing into your belly hand and filling up the lower part of your lungs. We want to have minimal movement in our chest in order to breathe deeper. This activates our parasympathetic nervous system, putting the brakes on our fight-flight response.
Now blow out the air slowly through your mouth.
Breathe in again for a slow count of 4 beats, hold your breath for 4 beats, blow out through your mouth for 4 beats, and hold for 4 beats. Do this 4 times. This exercise is called “Square breathing” and is a good one to start with, especially if you’re not a wind or brass player.
There are tons of other breathing variations, but basically the idea is to lengthen the amount of time between each inhalation, resulting in a much calmer and more focused state within minutes.
How did you go? Write below how it felt, or if you have any other breathing exercises that you do to help calm you down before you perform.
Here’s a short 30 second demo of diaphragmatic breathing by The Prehab Guys