2 breathing exercises to relax fast

Stress and anxiety grip millions of people. It controls what they do, how they do it, and it makes them tired and sick. In fact stress is a big contributor to disease and obesity.

Breathing exercises from the Far East help condition the mind and body to reduce stress and anxiety. They work by taking your thoughts and worries in the mind and redirecting them into an integrated movement pattern of breathing.

In today’s video, Dr. Luke Jih, Director of the Golden Light Institute for Body-Mind Advancement, will show you two breathing exercises to improve your body/mind condition. These breathing exercises help you concentrate your thoughts and connect them with your breath and body movement to create an inner stillness and relaxations. Let’s have a look.

1 – Belly breathing exercises

Stand with feet about 1.5 shoulder’s width apart, hands on your belly over your navel (left over right). Take a moment to bring your concentration back to your breathing.

As you breathe in, push your hands gently into your abdomen. As you breathe out, allow your belly to expand and push your hands back.

Feel how relaxed you can become by focusing your concentration into your breath.

Inhale and bring your belly and hands in; exhale and allow the belly and hands to move back out. Do this five times.

2 – Full body breathing exercises

Remain in standing position with feet 1.5 shoulder’s width apart.

This time, as you inhale you will raise your arms up slowly from their respective sides, to up above your head.

As you inhale, you want to imagine breathing in from your heel, up your legs, up through the spine, to the top of your head and up through your arms and out your fingers. This is full body breathing.

The raising up of the arms helps focus the mind and draw the energy upward, and open the lungs.

As you exhale, you will slowly lower your arms in front of your body. Your hands will come down, fingers pointing at each other but not touching, tracing the front of your body but not touching it.

Key Point: Time your inhale and exhale to match the speed of your arm raise and lower. If this is difficult for you, Dr. Luke also shows a double breathing with the exercise.

Do this for a total of five times. Each time try to go deeper into relaxation, brining your conscious mind back into your breath and movement.