How To Breathe To Manage Anxiety

How can we use our breath and our yoga practice to calm down and manage anxiety?

Focused and intentional breathing can calm the mind down, calm the nervous system, and bring us into the moment.

Although we might think using breathing to calm down is simple, it can be quite challenging when our minds are distracted.

This class, Three Ways To Breathe To Manage Anxiety, is designed to guide you through a beginner breath practice.

We use three simple breathing techniques in this class to go deeper into this.

Technical Breath is the simple attention to the breath.

Three Step Breath is dividing your inhale into three segments.

Box Breath is taking the breath into four parts, visualizing your breath going around a box.

How does mindful breathing help calm an anxious mind?

For me, it acts as an ANCHOR. By focusing on our breath, we give our mind a job, and even if it is a few minutes of simply focusing on ONE thing, we experience not feeling so scattered.

To do this, we can use a timer and simply breathe slowly, focusing on the length of the inhale and exhale. Give this class a try and notice how an investment of five minutes of simple breathing helps to calm the mind down.

RELATED CONTENT: Beginner Yoga Advice

This class is part of our upcoming Yoga for Anxiety series available at The Elevate Practice.