Managing Your Anxiety

 Anxiety can be useful to protect us from harm, anxiety acts as an alert system for potential danger and can prompt you when something needs your attention. However anxiety can become a problem when it takes over our lives when there is no real threat. This can result in panic attacks or physical symptoms such as a racing heart, sweating, fast shallow breathing, dizziness, confusion or a churning tummy to name a few. If this sounds familiar a good idea is to practice this breathing technique which soothes your parasympathetic nervous system and calms the body response by slowing down breathing and heart rate, decreasing tension and blood pressure so bringing the body and mind to a calmer state. It takes but 3 minutes. Try it and then practice daily so it becomes part of your day. Lay, sit or stand. Breath slowly in through your nose noticing the air filling your belly, don’t force it, just breathe in for a count of 5 and then out through your mouth for a count of 5. Let the air flow gently in and out without pausing or holding your breath ( if a count of 5 is tricky try 3 and work up to 5). Repeat for 3 min. (NHS 2019)