As a social worker, I have worked with many incredible people who have experienced trauma and are having to live with the impact that trauma has had on their day to day lives. I have been promoting breathing practice and meditation techniques over the years and a common response I get is 'breathing doesn't work for me when I really need it' (i.e. when experiencing a panic attack or heightened stress response).
I thought it might be worth addressing this here because THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
Breathing exercises are unlikely to work for you if you only try them when you are stressed or anxious. Our bodies and brains are not good at learning new skills at these times and we don't retain new information as well as we do when we are calm.
This is particularly important for children. A consistently stressed child is more likely to have difficulties retaining information and learning new skills. This can have long term impacts on their development. It is the sympathetic division of our autonomic nervous system that is activated during times of stress. This manages our fight/flight/freeze response and when it is activated, our body is focused on survival (i.e. NOT focused on listening to instructions or taking in new information). When a child is experiencing a heightened stress response, telling them to 'take a deep breath and calm down' is not likely to help them UNLESS breathing exercises are something that they have learnt and practiced regularly when they are calm and engaged.
When we practice consistently when we are calm, our bodies have the chance to retain a new skill. Only then will these techniques work during times of stress and they do work! Consistent practice means that our bodies remember these skills and use them when our brains are not in a good place.
I thought I should post this because if you have ever felt that calming exercises do not work for you or your children, I wanted to say give them another chance! If you take just a few minutes a day, you might find that in time, they were worthwhile after all!
