3 Breathing Exercises to Help with Emotional Regulation
I'm already burned out and don't have a lot of time. Why should I practice breathing exercises?
Breathing exercises help you step back from stressors so you can step forward with strength, prepared to give your greater yes both to yourself and to those you serve.
This doesn't seem to work the same way for me as it does for others. Is it really worth my time?
Different strategies work in different ways for different people. It’s ok if it takes some time for you to adjust to integrating these exercises into your schedule. Give yourself time. Give yourself the same grace you show to your students when you’re at your best.
My schedule changes. Can I still practice breathing exercises? Or, do I have to do them at the same time everyday?
It can be helpful to do these exercises at the same time every day when you’re just getting started, so that you can keep track of your practice and build the habit. But the great thing about breathing exercises is that you don’t have to carry equipment around with you. This means that they can be done anywhere and at any time that works for you and your schedule.
You’ve heard of mindfulness. It sounds like a nice idea, but in the rush of expectations from emails to meetings to conferences, is this something that can work for your life? This article covers 3 breathing exercises that you can bring into your schedule to help you take a couple of steps back from the noise, and retreat, recharge, and re-engage so you can approach your role from a position of emotional regulation and authenticity.
How Are Breathing Exercises Not a Waste of My Time?
Who you are is just as important, if not more important, than what you do. But this can be difficult to believe when the 24 hours in a day and mounting expectations and responsibilities leave you asking, “Am I enough?” That question is a key sign that you might be experiencing burnout. Your sense of emotional regulation might be tilting off-center because of central questions of identity and worth. It’s also why mindfulness, or practicing presence, might be more important for you than you realize. Breathing exercises help you to step back from the stresses of your current responsibilities so you can bring your best self into them. It’s stepping back to step forward. Here are 3 strategies that can help you do it.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
When stress results in shallower breathing, deeper breathing can counter the messages this shallower breathing sends to the brain and send alternate messages that help you to feel like you will be ok. Slow and controlled breaths first in through the nose and then out through the mouth also encourage relaxation by allowing you to mentally step away from stressors, even if only for a few moments. Diaphragmatic breathing is able to do this because it interrupts the fight-or-flight reflex that happens as a result of stress. Find out more about this relationship and see more of a deep dive into the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing. Click here to open a new tab and explore this article about the subject, published by Springer Nature and found in the National Library of Medicine.
Showing Yourself Grace While Practicing Diaphragmatic Breathing
You need to be prepared for two things when you’re first starting to integrate diaphragmatic breathing into your lifestyle. The first is that you might feel bored at first. The second is that you might feel more stressed the first few times you practice. This is because you might not be experiencing what you feel like you should be or making the kind of progress you feel like you should.
Identity and autonomy aren’t talked about enough when it comes to breathwork. Experiencing stress to the point where you want to do something about it can mean that you’re at a point where you’re questioning your sense of agency, that what you can do in terms of emotional regulation might not be enough, forgetting about challenges like burnout that can complicate things. You try something different. Something that might even be outside of your comfort zone. It’s different, so it might make you feel out of control, especially when you’re used to not giving yourself the space to process thoughts and feelings in this way. Here you are. And, if you know from the outset that something could take time to work through, you might question whether it could work. You might question if there’s something wrong with you because breathing exercises seem to work for others so easily.
Different strategies work in different ways and at different times for different people. Remember to give yourself the same grace you give your students when you’re at your best. Allow yourself the grace to be a student, a continual learner with a growth mindset.
Walking as a Tool to Facilitate Diaphragmatic Breathing
Practicing mindful, diaphragmatic breathing while walking is a pro tip for your tool bag. It enables you to tap into the part of yourself that drives you toward achievement while still removing yourself mentally from your stressors. When you do this, it’s important for you to do it in a predetermined area so that if your mind starts to wander, you’re able to lessen the possibility of physical harm from your environment. Because lessening physical harm is the goal, it’s important to make sure that the path you’ll be walking is clear of things that could cause harm, like sharp edges, piles of boxes, and other things that you recognize that could cause harm.
Once you’ve cleared the space of potential harms, do another quick sweep of the space just to make sure. Then, start walking in the spaces. As you do so, mark each step. Take your first step. Breathe in deeply through your nose. With the next step, exhale through your mouth. Remember that in diaphragmatic breathing, the aim is slow and controlled breaths. With each step, repeat this process. Take a step and breathe in through your nose. Another step and out through your mouth. It might take more conscious effort at first to remember the steps and to breathe diaphragmatically, but eventually it may become more natural.
4 7 8 Breathing Exercise
The 4 7 8 method of breathing builds on diaphragmatic breathing principles by encouraging slow and intentional breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Between these points is a holding period. The full count for this exercise is in for a count of 4, hold for a count of 7, and out for a count of 8 for a total of 6 repetitions for the set each time. For this exercise, it’s recommended that it be done sitting with your back against the wall or lying down flat on your back. The inclusion of measures, or counts, can be helpful to you as a learner because it may provide you with a greater sense of control while also encouraging deep and intentional breathing.
Box Breathing
Box breathing also builds on diaphragmatic breathing. This exercise encourages you to breathe in for a count of 4 through your nose, hold for a count of 4, then exhale through your mouth for a count of 4. Because of the even count of this exercise, it can pair more naturally with a room or another space. For example, if you’re in a safe space, you can use the 4 lines of a wall within that space as a visual cue to help guide your breathing.
Breathing Exercises for Emotional Regulation and Authenticity
Constant change and an overflow of responsibilities and tasks aren’t conducive to slowing down. This constant motion doesn’t help with burnout or stress. It doesn’t leave you the time you need to show yourself grace. When you can’t show yourself grace, it’s more difficult for you to show grace to others, to peers, and to those you serve.
Self-reconciliation is vital to both your ability to be authentic in your relationships with others and in emotionally rebuilding your relationship with yourself. Achieving this reconciliation, as with any path toward reconciliation, starts with answering two questions: What do I need to feel safe in this relationship? What’s needed in this relationship for it to feel whole?
Achieving Wholeness in Your Relationship with Yourself
Northeast State identifies 12 key elements of healthy relationships. Click here to open the article in a new tab and review how this relates to interpersonal relationships. While these elements do refer to interpersonal relationships, they can also be used to help you better understand your relationship with yourself. The messages you send to yourself through your actions and internal thoughts add up to conversations that you have with yourself. Here’s how.
How Breathing Helps with Self-Communication
Communication is defined by its central function of transmission. Thoughts, feelings, and experiences are shared from behind one boundary line across that boundary line across that boundary line to the point of reception through actions, writing, speech, or other signals. In your relationship with yourself, communication is happening, sometimes through the same modalities. The journey toward burnout contains several toxic messages, for example:
- You are what you do.
- Admitting you’re experiencing conflict means you’re a bad person.
- You aren’t worthy. Therefore, no one is.
To uncover more of these lies and unlock 12 mindset shifts that will help you overcome burnout, check out the article, 12 Mindset Shifts to Help You Overcome the Symptoms of Burnout. Click here to open the article in a new tab.
Meditation and intentional breathing are helpful for allowing yourself to identify the toxic messages that are making it across the boundary line and for countering these toxic messages. Slowing down gives these messages a chance to penetrate the receiving boundary. The presence of blind spots makes it possible to hold conversations intrapersonally. This is where self-conflict and self-talk come into play in positive, negative, and neutral forms. When you first start with this practice of deep breathing, all of these appear, and you might not have a framework for overcoming this yet.
I’m not a medical doctor of any kind. But, as you begin to integrate these practices into your wellness routine, working with a mental health professional may be beneficial.
How Breathing Exercises Help to Set the Stage for More Effective Intrapersonal Boundary-Setting
We talked a bit about the role of boundaries in terms of identity and communication. But they’re expressed in different ways when you learn to set the terms for what you can and cannot accept, and what crosses the limits and guidelines you set for psychological, physical, and emotional interactions. In your interactions with another person, this can look like setting a boundary or expectation that, if something needs to be accomplished by the next day, then that expectation needs to be communicated by a certain time the day before.
The identification process that practicing breathing exercises makes more apparent will make your self-talk, the positive, negative, and neutral, also more apparent. Working with a mental health professional and hearing what’s shared in this communication can help you understand where your boundaries with yourself should be. For example, if you’re struggling with the lie that you are what you do, that identifies that there’s a boundary that needs to be set. You need to sit down and think through where the boundary is between your personal and professional lives. If you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins, a boundary could look like you choosing an activity once per week that allows you to learn more about yourself and who you are as a person. It could be something as simple as connecting with your local Makerspace, visiting a local lake, or it could even tie back into your connection with your mental health provider and making the commitment to attend weekly sessions so that you can build this understanding.
A Holistic Approach to Insights Gained Through Breathing Exercises and Self-Reflection
Establishing boundaries means that you now have the clarity with which to establish the guidelines for when boundaries can be crossed, how often this might be allowable without your boundaries feeling violated, and without your reaching a point where you no longer enforce them. Access means more to the person on the other side of a boundary line when it’s understood that you understand the value of that boundary.
The regular practice of breathing exercises makes your self-talk more apparent. Sometimes this self-talk is more negative. Working with a mental health professional can help you navigate negative self-talk. In the course of this navigation, you might find that there are pieces of your negative self-talk that highlight accurate self-reflection. Working with someone outside of yourself can help you identify lies vs. what may actually be constructive criticism. Giving yourself permission to establish boundaries then sets the groundwork for informed consent in terms of what messages can be communicated across intrapersonal boundaries and what you won’t accept or receive.
How Honesty, Safety, and Boundary Reestablishment Work Together to Rebuild Trust
There is no trust without honesty. Trust is built on a track record of honesty and a respect for boundaries that results in a feeling of safety that ultimately yields trust. The trouble here is that burnout has resulted from your not being honest with yourself and from your crossing your own boundaries. You may have even allowed yourself to become someone else as a sacrifice to the work that led to these violations.
This is why it’s important for you to take the steps to rebuild this trust. Go to counseling. Take the time to get to know yourself better. Build a boundary between your personal and professional lives. All of this establishes a rhythm of honesty and respecting boundaries. Eventually, you will reach safety and trust with yourself again. Your path might seem a bit uneven at times, like 478 breathing. You might have times when the path seems a bit more straightforward, like Box Breathing. But you will get there.
Rebuilding this is the key to being able to show yourself grace. When you’re able to do this, you’ll be able to re-engage from a position of strength and not from what’s left once burnout has had its way.