Why Breathing Exercises?

Being mindful of our breathing can help us calm down when we are upset, frustrated, and anxious. One of our bodily responses when our emotions are running high is that our heart rate speeds up. That heart rate increase affects the rest of our body, potentially causing physical agitation, sweating, shaking, feeling jittery, stomach ache, headache, tight muscles, muscle ache, and more. Reducing heart rate to a more normal level can alleviate some of these bodily responses and allow us to focus more on possible solutions to our high emotions or to be better able to seek help.

There are many different ways to focus our breathing to help reduce upset, frustrated, and anxious feelings. The Calm Down Room has a variety of guided breathing exercises to explore. Below are a few more exercises.

Your Beating Heart

Lets test how our heart beats are connected to our breathing. Lay down and place one hand over your heart and one hand right above your belly button. Do this for one minute. What do your heart beats and breathing feel like? Are they fast or slow?

Now, stand up and jump up-and-down or do jumping jacks for one minute (I recommend setting a one-minute timer). When you are finished, stay standing and place one hand over your heart and one hand right above your belly button. What do your heart beats and breathing feel like? Are they fast or slow?

When I do this activity, I can feel my heart beating quickly in my chest and I am breathing much faster. Just like we can do activities that speed our heart rate and breathing, we can also do activities that slow our heart rate by slowing our breathing. Exercising can definitely increase our heart rate but so can intense emotions. When we get upset, frustrated, anxious, and angry our heart rate goes up and our muscles get tight. To help our body and mind feel better, we can slow our breathing to bring our heart rate down and relax our muscles.