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Want to Reduce Your Stress? Blow It Out Your Windpipe!

© Julie J. Murelle

Whoa! Before any one miss understands me, today's topic is breathing. Think about it, what happens to your body when you are stressed out? Angry? Afraid? If you don't know, the next time you are feeling these emotions, try to focus on whether or not you are breathing or breathing differently. I will bet that you are huffing and puffing enough to blow the house down. While this might be good for the wolf in the three little pigs, it is not good for a person trying to handle life's problems.

A couple of years ago, I received a phone call from my mother. My brother who is a paranoid schizophrenic was out visiting for the weekend and my mother called, said two words to me and then just put my brother on the phone without my permission or knowledge. I did the accounting for my mother and he was calling to say that the amount of cash he was receiving was not enough. It was not a pleasant conversation. It was surly and threatening and unbalanced. The problem with dealing with my brother when I am not expecting it is that he was really scary when I was growing up and as an adult he can still cause my breathing to go out of whack. I told him that there was no more money for him to receive and he got mad. I repeat, not a pleasant conversation. It ended up with him hanging up on me. When I got off the phone with him, I leaned over the sink and was gagging and not breathing anywhere near effectively. I had to lie on the floor and gain control of my breathing before I could go on.

As a theater major in college, breathing was taught in all of my acting classes and singing classes. How to breath if you are nervous, how to breath to project your voice, and how to get the most air into your body with every breath you take.

Before a performance or even a class we would lie on the floor and focus on our breathing. We would be given mental images, like imagining that our breath was like the tide swishing in and out. If we did not have time to lie on the floor, we would hang upside down and do this same thing. These are the skills, which have helped me when scenarios like the one above about my brother happen.

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