Everything is coming at us so quickly these days.

Emails. Voicemails. Twitter. Facebook. Texting. Everything that you would ever want to know can be found on the Internet. Everything is so fast.

And we feel like we can’t get even get a breath. Or at least a good breath. Many of us – maybe even most of us – are walking around and breathing so shallowly that we are fueling anxiety and panic as well as fatigue, headaches, and muscle tension.

I would encourage all of you who are feeling overwhelmed and tense and constantly feel like there’s not enough time to get everything down to slow down – even just a tiny bit.

It wasn’t always this way. And I don’t think we were really meant for all of this.

Just take five minutes. Five minutes. Breathe. No, probably not the way you usually breathe. I want you to be aware of every breath you take. Focus on your abdomen and feel it move in and out. Take a little longer to exhale than inhale. Count your breaths if you’d like. But just breathe.

Erik Peper, a professor at San Francisco State University at The Institute for Holistic Health Studies and a pioneer in the field of biofeedback, calls breathing “the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious.” The way we breathe affects our physical and mental health. And just five minutes of conscious breathing can make a world of difference in how we perceive our challenges and how we perceive our ability to meet these challenges. Conscious breathing also gives us a little more space between us and the hustle and bustle around us. And that can be quite a relief!

Oh, yes…and it wouldn’t hurt to step away from technology for a day here and there, too.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and you have no idea how to make everything feel manageable again, please call (512) 649-3050. I’d welcome the opportunity to help!

 

Andrea Greebon, LPC specializes in anxiety and stress and the treatment of such issues and more with traditional talk therapy and biofeedback.