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In the last blog, we were looking at worrying and the impact on not only our minds, but our bodies too. In this blog we want to explore one area of how our bodies can respond to stress. If we worry and get anxious, we will more than likely be impacting our breathing patterns. Our breath is such an important aspect of being alive, if we haven't taken a breath, in just a few minutes our bodies will just shut down and stop working. If we just take a moment to consider this, we all have to agree that our breathing is one of the top things our bodies rely on. What can happen in stress, is that our mind sends the signals to our bodies, and we can go one of two ways; we can literally stop breathing for a moment. What we find is that we start to hold our breath or tense parts of our torso up which then stops our bodies from breathing normally. Or we can find that our bodies start making us breathe faster, our breathing pattern will start to increase, at its worst we can start hyperventilating. Both of these extremes to our breathing can make us feel uncomfortable and this can then trigger our worries to continue to grow. Also, if we breathe erratically it will take up lots of energy doing this and in turn, reduce the amount of oxygen going to the brain. Because of this you can feel lightheaded and will have a rapid heartbeat. All of the symptoms are signs that you are anxious or having an anxiety attack. If we learn to be more positively aware of how we breathe, and work to remove the habits that are causing this tension around our breathing, we will automatically feel more relaxed.