Breathing for Succeeding
You may not have thought about how to put a free commodity to best use: your breath. Focus on breath is not only a hallmark of mediation, mindfulness, yoga practices, or even just letting steam off. The idea is that focus on the breath directs attention away from the outside world and calms the system. Rhythmic breathing has been shown to strengthen the natural reserves and coping functions of the body, improve cognitive function, reduce stressors and optimize human performance (1).
Just focusing and noticing in and outbreath, as in pure mediation breathing, may not be the easiest for the novice – one just tends to get distracted to easily. Adding repeatedly an utterance or sound to the breath is helpful in keeping the attention and deepening the experience. Such sounds, often described as “mantra,” can become a spiritual ritual, and have been associated with psychological and spiritual powers in Hinduism, Buddhism, other religious and meditative practices. In this context, the sounds don’t necessarily have to have a meaning as a word and may just consist of one or more drawn-out syllables (om or similar).
If you want to keep it simple and fast, you can harness the benefits of relaxation breathing by adding words with meaning. This creates images that are associated with suggestions – getting you in the self-hypnotic relaxation realm. You can chose wording that accompanies the in-breath, the outbreath, or both.
Key is to choose for the in-breath positive, good things you want to fully take in. Examples can be strength, confidence, health, or whatever you want to have more of. For the outbreath the mantra may be whatever you want to let go of. The question then arises whether to spell out the feeling you want to breath out such as “anxiety” or “pain”. This may work best if you already have the feeling. In particular for pain management, just imaging to breathing the discomfort right out of the skin can be a helpful image.
If you use the breathing sequence to simply give yourself a signal to go into relaxation you may be better off to remain neutral and not evoke negative suggestions, such as anxiety. A sequence that works really well in our clinical practice and clinical trials is a modification we owe to Dr. Max Shapiro, a master of hypnotic techniques. We now suggest
- With each breath in take in strength
- And with each breath out and think “calm”
Doing this you might actually notice how with each breath you a little more tension out of your body. After you have used this technique a few times you can even make it to become like a reflex or a signal – so that whenever you need to relax quickly you can just start with a few breath and your chosen words.
The nice thing is: It is easy to do, anywhere, any time.
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