Part of a cure may be in learning to breathe

MarCPatt

My answer to fearfull is very important to all social phobics out there. I think that we can probably help ourselves a lot by learning how to breathe correctly.

This is what I wrote to her/him:

Yes, I sometimes feel that I am about to faint when around too many people, or people I am not used to.

I found a good site that may help you and all the other SPs out there that have a similar problem. The site is:

Healthy Breathing by Rosalba Courtney-Belford
... Healthy, strong people breathe less at rest and during sleep, but they can breathe ... Stress, anxiety and emotions all stimulate our breathing rate and heart rate ...
http://www.buteyko.com/media/healthy_breathing.html

This site states that:

a) "Most people whose body, mind, or spirit is out of balance will hyperventilate or overbreathe with lots of short breaths that leave them depleted of CO2 and therefore not utilising oxygen properly. Good breathing, according to the standards of medical texts and the World Health Organisation is about four to six litres of air per minute."

b) "The better you breathe, the less breaths per minute you need to take."

c) "12 breathes per minute would be the upper limit of what you should be breathing. Less than that is better."

_________________

Frozen_In_Time · Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 12:11 pm Post subject:

Thank you for sharing that. I do believe that breathing is a key issue, and what you wrote supports that. I hope people will be able to use this knowledge to help them get better. I hope this is working for you, if you are choosing this route. Good luck! Smile

kc69 · Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2004 9:21 pm Post subject:

I think calm breathing is very important, it reduces stress and if you'r concentrating on yyou'r breathing and trying to slow it down then theirs less of you'r mind cocentrating on negetive thoughts. I used to start everyday by doing one sometimes two position In a yoga book I have and I could feel my heartrate slow down dramatically but then something happened that totally blew me out of the water and I forgot about it and I returned to my anxious self.

P.s thanks for reminding me I'm going to try and find that book again.

thank you kc