Stress vs shortness of breath
Posted on: 15/Dec/2017 5:24:00 PM
When you are stressed, you tend to experience shortness of breath. As you experience shortness of breath, you tend to get nervous or anxious which will furthermore increase the shortness of breath.
When you are anxious, it will tighten the breathing muscles and thus you tend to breathe faster. When your anxiety increases, due to the stress your muscles get subjected to, they feel tired. Hence, it will furthermore raise shortness of breath and you will feel even more anxious. It is at this point that you tend to lose patience and panic.
So, ultimately, you can avoid the entire cycle of actions by being able to control stress.
There are a few tricks in breathing techniques which you can follow to get more air through your lungs.
First of all, learn to relax yourself
Identify the reason for stress in you. Avoid such scenarios as much as you can. Whenever you feel stressed, identify a calm place to go to and stay calm and relaxed there.
Here are a few relaxation tips that may help you
- Tighten each and every muscle throughout your body. Start from toes and keep going up right till your head.
- Feel your muscle groups that get relaxed and get heavy
- Bid bye to all the thoughts that comes into your mind
- Get relaxed deeper and deeper
- Gain consciousness of the calmness and relaxation that you feel
- Once you feel that you are relaxed, you can get back to normalcy by moving your toes and fingers followed by hands and feet and stretch your body entirely
- While getting relaxed, practice diaphragmatic breathing, as it helps in expanding your lungs and get more air. For this, lie down on your back. Keep one hand on your belly and another hand on the chest. You will be able to sense your hand on the belly moving and the hand on chest immobile.
- While breathing out, you can feel the movement in the hand placed on the belly
- As you practice this breathing technique in lying down position, you can start practicing the same in sitting or standing position.
- Every single time you feel shortness of breath, try to stay calm. Be it whatever, stop doing any work that you are indulged in. Sit calm and relax yourself and your shoulders at the maximum. Place your arms on a table in front and lean forward. Now, you can try pursed lip breathing as it can help in breathing more air for deeper breaths.
