"Know your power over your emotions."
Step 5: Emotions – Managing Emotional and Physiological Responses
To navigate life’s challenges with greater ease and maintain a state of inner balance, practise managing your emotional and physiological responses.
Processing Emotions: When intense emotions arise, allow yourself to fully feel them, understanding that this is a temporary biochemical rush. The sensation, triggered by a release of chemicals in the brain, lasts only about 90 seconds as it moves through your bloodstream and stimulates physical responses. By observing and naming these emotions without judgement, you enable them to pass through you. Importantly, how you choose to interpret or continue thinking about the emotion can either prolong this response or allow it to subside, preventing a secondary rush of emotional response.
When you need to manage your stress response and activate your body’s relaxation response, a very powerful and effective method is to use breathing exercises.
Some of the most widely used techniques are summarised below; choose whichever works best for you, depending on the circumstances.
1. For immediate stress reduction and focus, use Box Breathing (a 4-4-4-4 pattern): Begin by slowly inhaling through your nose to a count of four, fully expanding your lungs. Hold your breath for four seconds, ensuring you maintain a relaxed posture. Gently exhale through your mouth for a count of four, releasing all the air from your lungs. Conclude the cycle by holding your breath again for four seconds before initiating the next inhalation.
2. For rapid anxiety or stress reduction or to aid sleep, use 4-7-8 Breathing: Inhale quietly through your nose for four seconds, hold the breath for seven seconds, then exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound for eight seconds. This breathing pattern is recommended to be performed for four cycles, twice a day.
3. For mental clarity, focus, and nervous system balance, use Alternate Nostril Breathing: Close off your right nostril with your thumb and inhale through the left nostril. Then, use your fingers to close the left nostril, open the right, and exhale through the right nostril. Next, inhale through the right nostril, switch by using your thumb to close the right nostril, and exhale through the left. Repeat this cycle 3 to 5 times.
4. For overall health and relaxation, use Diaphragmatic Breathing: Sit comfortably with your back straight. Breathe in deeply through your nose, allowing your belly (not your chest) to expand with air. Focus on feeling the diaphragm move downwards with inhalation. Exhale slowly and deeply through the mouth or nose, engaging your stomach muscles to push all the air out.
Regular practice of these techniques helps you effectively manage your emotional highs and lows, maintaining equilibrium. These focused breathing exercises strengthen long-term emotional resilience and physiological health, enhancing your capacity for handling life’s complexities with calmness and clarity.
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