The Art of Deep Breathing
This is my first post on this weeks topic of relaxation. Stress management is an important part of the marijuana addiction recovery process.
Many people, myself included, do not breathe properly, and hold tension in their body while breathing. Nerves and anxiety are often the cause of this. We want to be breathing full, deep breaths from our lower abdomen. An icon of the buddha with a fat belly, is a symbol of his breathing techniques among other things.
If you feel nervous, anxious, or catch yourself breathing high in the chest, you can follow this simple 4 step technique to “vacuum your lungs” and reset your diaphragm back to a deep breathing pattern.
Resetting your Diaphragm
1. Exhale completely, blow out every single bit of air from your lungs as best you can.
2. Bend over. I like to fold my arms in front of my stomach when I bend to get that extra little bit of air out. Bending over expels the last bits of air from your lungs. When you’re totally out of air make sure you hold you breath, so you don’t accidentally let any air in.
3. Stand up while holding your breath. This increases lung volume, so air will want to flow into your lungs, but don’t breathe. Wait about 10 seconds until your body really needs a breath.
4. Then, when you can’t take much more, Breathe! Your body will have moved over from your normal, everyday breathing to unregulated, autonomic “response breathing.” You should feel your breathing has switched to deep and rhythmic breathing.
That’s all there is to it. Once you let your body take that unregulated breath in step 4, your nervous system reboots your lungs, and your previous tense and anxious breath becomes a thing of the past.
I recommend performing this technique, then breathing deeply for a couple of minutes to ingrain the positive feeling of breathing deeply and fully. Hope this helps.
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This is Part #2 of a 4 part series on Reasons to Quit Marijuana.
This is Part #1 of a 4 part series on my reason to quit smoking weed.
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