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How To Breathe Better To Reduce Stress And Anxiety

The way that your breathe changes when you are stressed & anxious.

You can override this through simple breathing exercises.

Find out how in this interview.

In this interview, Tracey Howes explains how breathing changes when we're stressed.

She also gives 2 simple exercises you can do to reduce stress & anxiety.

An image of the opening slide to this video the title is how to breathe better to reduce anxiety and stress an interview with Tracey Howes written in white on a pale orage background on the left with a diagonal devider and an image on the right of a black man with cropped hair in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up. He is sat at his desk and leaning back in his chair with hands in his lap and eyes closed as he focuses on his breathing. the background is white painted brick office with a window and a plant on some white shelving behind him

What Is Discussed In This Interview With Tracey Howes

Hedshot of Tracey Howes Functional Breathwork Instructor She is smiling looking straight at the camera. You can jsut see the straps of her green top. Behind her is the sea, calm with only gentle ripples on the surface

Tracey Howes is a functional breathwork instructor and freediver based on the south coast of England.

Being a freediver means she goes diving without the aid of any additional breathing support. So knowing how we breathe and improving her capacity for holding her breath is somewhat important. That led her to explore more about breathing and the importance of how we breathe.

She trained with Oxygen Advantage and works with all kinds of individuals including athletes, those training for a big event or just generally want to get the most from their exercise

The article below is a summary. Please watch the full interview for all of the valuable information Tracey shares.

What Is Functional Breathwork?

Firstly just to give a brief over view of Functional Breathwork is it covers:

  • Blood chemistry, in other words, how carbon dioxide and oxygen interact in our blood
  • Biomechanics of the body. So how our bodies move when we breathe in terms of our breathing muscles as well as our skeleton and the impact that that has on the nervous system and the brain.

When we breathe correctly, in a better way it benefits your health in a number of ways.  Within this article Tracey discusses stress and anxiety.

Did You Know There Are Different Types Of Stress?

It is important to understand that there are two different types of stress. Good stress and bad stress.

Good stress, for example, would be pushing the body to perform for a sporting activity.

Bad stress is where we internalise the anxiety that we feel and the body has a physiological response. So the heart rate tends to increase, the cortisol levels will increase.

That can cause shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, headaches, tingling in the fingers and just feeling a little foggy and not really being able to think clearly and reason.

Fortunately, if we change our breathing patterns, we are able to eliminate and alleviate a lot of these symptoms.

A man sat on a step in front of a door. He's wearing blue jeans and a blue and white checked shirt. He is sitting with his hands over the back of his head, elbows on thighs looking at the floor stressed and in dispair

Can The Way That You Breathe Lower Your Response To Anxiety And Stress?

A lady facing the camera with her eyes closed you can see by her pursed lips that she is breathing out to try and calm herself down. Her hands are either side of her head with finger tips to temples. She is wearing a white t-shirt and in front of a white wall.
In essence, yes.

When you are worrying, thoughts are whirring around in your head , often you can’t get beyond those thoughts. We literally waste energy when we’re in that head space because the brain requires, fuel to function. That fuel includes glucose and oxygen, just as you need them for your muscles to move so that you can walk or run or sit.

If your brain is using more glucose and more oxygen when you’re worrying, you’re actually just wasting all this energy and putting this unnecessary stress on the body.

Part of the breathwork training that Tracey works with people on is really understanding how to calm the nervous system. How to bring that heart rate down and move from the fight or flight response into the rest and digest response.

Being able to move successfully between both those means that you have a much healthier nervous system. You don’t want to be in the fight or flight all the time, particularly if you’re trying to go to sleep.

But you also don’t want to be in the rest and digest phase all the time, because then you won’t be able to perform when you need to. So the key between that is the breath and understanding how to calm the heart rate, slow the breathing volume down.

There are various techniques that we can use to do that, which when you have developed self awareness, can be a real preventative to help you move away from feeling that stress that anxiety that can literally take over and just make you feel really unwell and out of sorts.

It explains why stress and anxiety is so exhausting as well.

What solutions are available to help manage stress and anxiety?

One of the simplest things you can do, is keeping the mouth, gently closed, focusing on nasal breathing and just slow the breathing down. Anybody can do this, literally within 90 seconds, you can shift your state from feeling stress to feeling calmer and inhaling through the nose and then extending the exhale as you do that.

As an example breathe in for 4 seconds and breathe out for 6 seconds.  If you did that for 90 seconds, less than the time it takes to make a cup of tea. You can immediately feel a change in the body. You can start to bring the heart rate down, the cortisol levels will drop. It will, of course, be different for everybody.

A yoga type scene. There is a couple of yoga blocks one on top of the other and strap on top to the left, then a wooden wicker meditation block with meditation beads on the top. To the right is a blue mat rolled up on top of soft blue cushions. In the background are the words inhale, exhale in black on a white lightbox

If you are in a hyper sensitised state or you’re prone to panic disorder, which is a lot more extreme, the body may take longer to shift.

For most of us dealing with everyday stresses and just needing that moment of calm, just that short 90 seconds inhaling through the nose slowing your exhale down can just re-focus the mind and calm the nervous system. It helps to just bring you into the present moment a little bit as well and just make you aware of what it is that’s whirring around.

It can be helpful to build this technique into your daily routine e.g. when you are making a drink, driving, out walking.  Find something you do daily and create this as a habit alongside it.

A Breathing Exercise To Calm Your Nervous System:

One of Tracey’s favourite exercises is if you are able to lie down on the floor, on a yoga mat, on a bed, the floor and take a book, something with a little bit of weight to it.

Five people are lying in a row side by side, a mixture of men and women of different ages. There heads are to the right and they are lying width ways, you can just see their upper torsos they all have their eyes closed and their hands on their upper abdomens just below the base of their ribcages. They are clearly in a studio of some kine heads on blosters and you can see the wooden floor beneath them.

Place the book on your tummy just below your sternum (base of your ribs). Bend your legs so your knees are bent and your shoulders down relaxed. Feet should be on the floor.

Close your eyes and gently inhale through the nose and softly exhale. You could do the four seconds and six seconds breathing cycle if that works for you. But it’s not essential, it’s not about the number, it’s much more about focusing on the sensation in the body and the purpose of having a book on the diaphragm.

When you take a full inhale, that book will rise, and as you take a slow exhale, the book will fall, and that movement and feeling in the body focuses the mind on the slow inhale and exhale.

Doing this for a couple of minutes will really help lower your heart rate, calm the nervous system and essentially remind the body that it’s safe. That’s a chemical reaction that happens in the brain.

When the breathing is calm, it will send a signal to the brain that everything is fine, everything is good, and a few minutes of that can really have a powerful effect on reducing stress and anxiety.

A Breathing Exercise To Do At Work

A man at work. It is an office environment with white walls, a white desk and he is wearing a white shirt. You can make out his laptop on the furthest part of the desk at the front with some papers to the side of it. He is leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. He looks like he is just taking a bit of time out and focussing on his breathing to re-ground and reduce his stress levels. Behind him is a small white shelving unit with some plants on it.

You  can also do the above exercise sitting in an office (encourage your colleagues to join in) so you can’t lie on the floor.

Whilst sitting at your desk and placing your hands on your lower two ribs, close your eyes and do the exercise seated and feel lateral expansion of your ribs as you inhale. As you exhale, your ribs will be moving back in.

The reason we focus on lateral expansion is because we want you to breathe from the base of your lungs. That’s going to really activate the diaphragm.  Your diaphragm needs to move freely.

When were tense we hold so much tension in the muscle that the diaphragm will constrict. By having that movement and that mindful motion of expansion and contraction other than calming mind. It also helps the diaphragm to activate properly and for you to get much more air into your lungs, which essentially oxygenates the brain, the tissues, the organs.  As a result you feel good.

How Much Of A Time Commitment Is Breathwork?

Focusing on nasal breathing is step one, avoiding mouth breathing. But then, when people work with me and we do these very specific exercises, they aren’t taking hours and hours.

You  can do up to 2.5 minutes to 15 minutes a day. But again, it’s what motivates you to want to make those changes. And essentially, it’s a lifestyle change. So if you can incorporate tiny little micro habits into your day today, the long term benefits are phenomenal.

If your curious to find out more about Tracey Howes and her course options you can find out more from any of the means below

Tracey Offers:

Taster sessions which are 60 minutes on zoom once a month.

3 week programme working in small groups.

She also does corporate work, wellness retreats, health and wellbeing festivals and works with other healthcare practitioners.

Other Breathwork Interviews With Tracey Howes

An image of the opening slide to this video the title is an interview with Tracey Howes Functional Brethwork Instructor, How to improve fitness with breathwork written in white on a pale orange background on the left with a diagonal divider and an image on the right of a group of 3 people out running in a park or woodlands. They are all smiling and enjoying themselves on a sunny day.
An image of the opening slide to this video the title is an interview with Tracey Howes Functional Brethwork Instructor, How The Way You Breathe Affects Your Sleep written in white on a pale orange background on the left with a diagonal divider and an image on the right of a couple asleep in bed. You can only see their heads as they are lying on their side both facing the camera with one hand under their heads. Their eyes are closed as well as their mouths looking realxed in their sleep. The pillow you can see is white and the wall above their heads is white too.
An image of the opening slide to this video the title is how breathing can help women's health an interview with Tracey Howes
An image of the opening slide to this video the title is an interview with Tracey Howes Functional Brethwork Instructor, How Breathing Impacts Immune System written in white on a pale orange background on the left with a diagonal devider and an image on the right of a Woman in a grey tank top facing out to the right. She has long brown hair and her eyes are closed with her mouth closed and a half smile. She looks like she is enjoying the fresh air on her face and breathing it in through her nose.

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