Breathing with Imagery

How to Feel Better Instantly. Relief Breathing: with imagery

1. Vividly imagine having to carry a heavy sack of groceries a lot farther than you had expected. Feel the weight, the sweat, the ache in your arms and shoulders, whatever that experience is for you. How strongly can you imagine, feel, see that?
2. Now imagine finally arriving at the table or counter or chair where you can finally set down that burden. Breathe your first breath of relief as that wonderful easing happens.
3. Now breathe your next breath as if it were that first deep sigh of relief from when you were finally setting down that burden.
10. Each next breath, when you get around to it (this should be a luxuriously slow process of breathing), make that your first great sigh of relief as you set down that burden at last. Make each next breath that first great sigh of relief... (Continue for several minutes, s-l-o-w-l-y.)

It’s as easy as that! Compare how you're feeling now. Better than when you started? Breath is regulated by, and provides a bridge to, your autonomic nervous system. By breathing in a focused-relief pattern for several minutes, you signal your nervous system to relieve you of anything bothering you. This is a great little tactic to use when you find yourself below par or being bothered by something.

Not only do you breathe in characteristic ways in response to what's going on or how you feel, but you can breathe deliberately in such patterns. This causes the autonomic nervous system to make your state-of-being congruent with that pattern of breathing!