YOGA TAICHI 91
Harmonious alliance of Yoga, Taichichuan, Qigong and Meditation
Techniques
Yves Gendron Psychologist
1. Practise belly breathing at home every day at rest. It will become automatic. Also practice instant relaxation regularly. Indeed, an anxious person has acquired a very bad breathing, it often breathes through the chest, which amplifies the symptoms of anxiety or even triggers them. But the innate breathing is that of the belly, you can observe babies and animals, they all breathe through the belly. So the first thing for an anxious person is to relearn to breathe well. This breathing should become automatic again. You will have difficulty at the beginning, you will perhaps have feelings of suffocation or cramps in the belly, it is completely normal because you will fight against an achievement but once this stage is passed, you will find your breathing of birth, a true treat. It's good to do breathing sessions several times a day with 10 breathing movements in a row (in the morning in bed, at noon and in the evening before going to bed). The one I liked best was the evening breathing, I ended up falling asleep like a baby, you'll see that you end up feeling a great relaxation (see "How to sleep well"). Besides, if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night with feelings of anxiety, do the breathing exercise again until you feel the calmness and fall asleep peacefully.
2. Stop anticipating (see "Managing anticipation and anxious thoughts"): What a horror for an anxious person! They often live by imagining the worst and imagine catastrophic scenarios, making situations worse. It is important to know that imagination is often worse than reality, but the problem is that imagination causes a lot of anxiety long before the person experiences the real situation, this is called anticipation. We will have to learn to anticipate less and to lower the anxiety by a new way of thinking. In order to stop anticipating, you must practice stopping your thoughts and then change negative thoughts into positive ones. You will have to read the document on anticipation carefully, you will have to reread it quite a lot because it is difficult. It is one of the hardest to understand and to put into practice but it is indispensable, it changed my life.
3. Learn not to be afraid of the symptoms of a panic attack (see "Managing panic attacks"): they are never dangerous, they are certainly very unpleasant, but they always subside in the end. The aim is to wait for this decrease and above all not to run away.