download  1 .jpg

Breathing to Relieve Anxiety

Nov 30, 2015

Linda Newbold

Linda Newbold

Nov 30, 2015

    • Breathing is an excellent tool to help calm yourself if you notice your reactions are becoming stressed, irritable or anxious
    • Whilst you would normally breathe without much awareness, you can bring it within your conscious control and better use of it when you need to react differently
    • If you are living with overwhelming anxiety, find a therapist here

Difficult, stressful or traumatic situations often cause shallow breathing, holding of the breath, tight anxious breathing or over-breathing and panic attacks. Negative beliefs and unresolved and non-discharged emotions held in the body from all kinds of difficult situations or trauma create a build up of toxins and breathing properly can help to release them.

It's helpful to remember:

  • each time you breathe in you stimulate the sympathetic nervous system SNS to prepare for action
  • when you breathe out you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system PNS which slows down the heart
  • If you slow down the out-breath to about double the length of the in-breath you will start to feel more in-control and much calmer

Article tags

practitioner photo

Linda Newbold

A very experienced integrative therapist offering calm and confidential help to resolve a wide variety of problems, including trauma and abuse. I include many creative and cutting edge approaches within a relational base to achieve this. I'm delighted that appreciative feedback from clients has confirmed that a great deal of success and welcome change has taken place for them.
welldoing logo

We are the UK’s leading therapist matching service with 40,000+ people discovering life-changing therapy through us

mental health practitioners

Sign up as a Welldoing user to claim your free Holly Health app (worth £38.99) and more

If you need emergency help or are thinking about harming yourself, contact the Samaritans on 116 123.
For emergency services phone 999 or 112.

Join over 30,000 on our newsletter

© 2013-25 by Welldoing. All Rights reserved. Cookie Policy | Privacy Policy | Terms and conditions

Visit Welldoing on XVisit Welldoing on FacebookVisit Welldoing on YouTubeVisit Welldoing on LinkedInVisit Welldoing on Instagram

© 2013-25 by Welldoing. All Rights reserved. Cookie Policy | Privacy Policy | Terms and conditions

Welldoing Ltd is a registered trademark in England and Wales. No 8614689.