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Stress, people, events, things, and oh, did I mention stress happens. When we’re stressed we tend to take shallow breaths, depleting ourselves of the oxygen necessary to function properly and think creatively. This article will give you information about just how important breathing can be.

The Easiest Way to Help Yourself – And It’s Free!

One of the tools we stress in Chaos to Connection is for parents to help their kids is parents taking care of themselves. As with other activities (work, exercise, play), you can only be an optimal parent when you take care of yourself. To parent well, you need to be in a good place yourself – healthy, rested, relaxed, fed. I have noticed that with my own family is feeling extra stress during school breaks and holidays, and my wife and I are that much less able to parent our kids well.

So what can we, as parents, do to help ourselves? And how can we fit one more thing into our busy lives? The easiest way to help yourself is to practice good breathing. An article, “Just Breathe,” in the November 2009 issue “Real Simple” magazine, reminded me of the importance of breathing. As the article states:

Studies show that mindful breathing can do wonders to increase your well-being and can stimulate growth of the brain’s frontal cortex, which regulates emotion. Research suggests that deeper and slower inhaling and exhaling can help your body heal faster from illness, lower blood pressure, and possibly help increase immunity.

Your breathing changes depending on the situation you’re in. In high stress situations, your breathing is more shallow and quick. In calm situations, your breathing slows. With the fast pace of life today, it’s more likely that you’re breathing shallowly all the time. With slow, deep breathing, we can interrupt our stress response and become anchored in the moment (also a key tool in Chaos to Connection).

Good breathing has the added benefit of being free and available any time. You just have to know how to do it and remember to do it.

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