Monday, 27 April, 2020
Our wellbeing co-ordinator Sam Wells has released a video about deep breathing to help manage stress and anxiety levels over the coming weeks.
The video demonstrates diaphragmatic, or ‘belly breathing’, which is a quick and safe way of breathing deeply and calmly to help soothe both body and mind. It can be done anywhere and doesn’t require any specialist equipment.
It’s best if you find a quiet space to do this in but as long as you can breathe deeply through your diaphragm and feel some relaxation through the breathing, it doesn’t really matter where you are.
Sam said: “At Commercial Occupational Health Services Ltd (COHS), we recognise people’s stress and anxiety levels may be raised due to what we are facing at the moment.
“People may be anxious about working from home, about educating children at home, about the world at large and of course about our health and how to stay healthy.
“When we are stressed or anxious, our bodies are in a heightened state of alert and go into fight or flight response.
“One of the ways we can help to manage our stress and anxiety levels during these times is diaphragmatic breathing. This basically means breathing deeply through the diaphragm, rather than through the chest, which enables our bodies to relax more fully.
“It helps to tell our bodies that there is no imminent danger and our bodies and minds are able to relax.
“Diaphragmatic breathing sounds complicated but it’s very simple. It’s a really safe, quick and easy exercise to help you to bring those stress and anxiety levels down to a manageable level. It’s something we can all do at home at any time of the day and it doesn’t take very long.”
You can watch Sam’s video from here. To maintain appropriate social distancing, Sam’s children have helped with the filming of this video, so please forgive a little camera shake …