In the United States, recent reports have indicated that the menace of stress is rising and it is affecting more workers. While it is difficult to avoid stress entirely, everyone should make efforts to overcome stress because its consequences are not good.

People contending with stress experience health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart diseases, obesity, diabetes, etc. it is also the cause of emotional and psychological issues. Stress is usually accompanied by worry, insecurity, and the individual will end up living an unhealthy and unfulfilled life. There are however some useful solutions that can be used to overcome stress.

Mindfulness meditation has been proven to be effective against stress. The following suggestions will help you adopt mindfulness meditation as an effective way to cope with stress in the workplace.

Adopt a pattern that allows you to meditate regularly

Meditation should be approached from the perspective of living in the present. Forgetting all worries and the past events, while focusing on your rhythmic breath promotes your attention to meditation. This is the principle of the mindful meditation

Gaining control of your mind to focus on only the positive is one of the benefits of mindfulness meditation. To get started you need to find a place where you can sit quietly for a few minutes. Close your eyes and listen to your breath. Feel the air on your skin as it passes through your nose. Count your breaths from one to five silently in your mind. Counting should be repeated while maintaining the position.

You should continue counting even when you experience a distraction. Regain your focus and continue counting. After few minutes, your mind will attain a slow, calm state.

Mindfulness meditation can be enhanced by placing a figurine of Buddha in your meditation room or area. The Buddha figurine is known to inspire inner peace and strength. It will help you achieve the meditation state and the accompanying feelings. The use of meditation figurines is to help you attain a higher level of peace, relaxation, and serenity.

The essence of mindful breathing

One of the best ideas from mindful meditation is that you can practice mindful breathing anywhere and at any time of the day. All you need to do is to take three to five mindful breaths and then continue with your tasks. Mindful breathing simply means your concentration is on your breathing while your mind is free from other thoughts. It helps you remain calm when faced with disturbing situations by slowing down your mind to prevent agitation.

Frequently engage in mindful walking

Walking is another great time to meditate. You can take out some time while walking to practice mindful walking. Following the same principles as mindful breathing, focus your concentration on your steps without heading in any particular direction then slow down your pace. By slowing down, you compel your mind to become calm.

Benefiting from deep listening

A total focus on what people are saying without letting your mind wander is your goal in this exercise. By practicing deep listening, you can improve your communication and relationships with people who will appreciate your interest in listening to what they are saying. Deep listening is also regarded as a form of respect, and it helps to promote healing and internal transformation.

 

Breathing is something that we usually don’t think about, it is natural process and people rarely ask themselves are they breathing properly or not. Most of us just assume that we do. Now, the truths is that we might be breathing too deeply, or just taking too shallow breaths, either way it is not a bad idea to pay attention to the way we breathe for time to time since there are certain situations in life when our breathing can be crucial for resolving a health issue.

Using breathing to battle anxiety

There are different levels of anxiety, for some it occurs periodically and is triggered by a particularly stressful situation. For others it is more constant and can be quite debilitating to a point where it disrupts their everyday life. One of the main symptoms of anxiety, apart from rapid heartbeat and chest pains, is shallow breathing. This particular symptom can also be associated with panic attacks which are usually preceded by a high level of anxiety.

Now in order to help your body get out of this uncomfortable state, it is very important to learn to control your breathing and to use it as tool to overcome the feelings of discomfort. By taking control of your breathing you will be able to keep your anxiety at bay which will have an overall positive effect on your quality of life.

Now let’s see how we can learn to control our breathing.

Be mindful

In this case mindfulness means being observant of the changes in our breathing pattern. So as soon as your breathing starts to speed up and your begin taking shorter breaths you can asses that your anxiety is kicking in, and you can be ready to nip it in the bud.

Slow it down

Now that you are aware of the changes in your breathing it is time to take charge and start slowing it down. Slowly start taking control, make sure you take your time for each breath, around five seconds to inhale, hold the air in for two and then another five to exhale. Counting in your head is also a great way to distract your mind from whatever is causing your anxiety. So slowly inhale and exhale, repeat this pattern until you heart rate slows down and gets back to normal.

Long term management

If you are fighting anxiety on  a daily basis your body might have gotten used to taking shallow short breaths, and this is something that you will need time to correct. In this case you need to fight the cause not the symptom. Include yoga or meditation in your everyday life. Both of these focus on breathing exercise and will help your body remember the proper breathing regiment. In addition you will also be able to learn how to steady your mind which can do wonders for your anxiety.

Other breathing issues you should be aware of

While breathing control exercise can do wonders for anxiety and the shallow rapid breathing associated with it. There are other breathing disorders that require additional help to control. One of them is sleep apnea, is a common disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops for 10 seconds or more during sleep.

This deprives our body and brain of oxygen and can cause people to awake briefly several times during the night resulting in some cases in chronic fatigue. There are numerous possible causes of sleep apnea, but what matters is that people suffering from this disorder get help straight away since long term health consequences might be severe.

This article has shown you how important breathing actually is, and that we should not take it for granted. Being able to take long deep breaths and sleep through the night is a luxury, one we should not take for granted.