My wife and I were recently talking about a friend of ours who is often rather overworked. This person has many work and family obligations on the go, taking up nearly all of the waking hours in the day. This friend recently mentioned that the new plan for relaxation is to attend regular yoga classes. This, of course, is yet another obligation within a life full of obligations. I can relate to this. I have a few jobs, kids, family, regular martial arts training, a somewhat rigid and compulsive exercise and meditation routine, and so forth. In a previous blog quite some time ago, I believe I commented on how, when I was a high school student, I was an expert at relaxing. This is another way to say that I was lazy! Now, many years later, I find myself re-learning how to relax. I think many of us probably need to do that, even if we sometimes think of ourselves as lazy. Is finding a new yoga class or meditation group the best way to relax? Well, yoga and meditation have incredible benefits, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting involved in these types of groups. Moreover, going to a class has social benefits and can make people feel more connected to one another. That said, I think of those types of activities as icing on the cake. If there’s no cake, you just have icing. As an aside, I have often wished that people would make cakes in such a way that 3/4 is icing and 1/4 is cake, but I digress! The cake, in my opinion, is the fundamental ability to find peace and relaxation in every day life. I think this is one of the key pieces of the foundation of self-care. So often, I think people look for ways outside of their every day lives to find peace in route relaxation, when the opportunities are almost endless within each moment. A good starting point is with breathing, an activity that we are all always doing. We can use our breathing as a way to become centred in the present moment, no matter what activity we’re doing, a way of relaxing ourselves when we are keyed up and more anxious or nervous than we want to be, and as a way of becoming focused on whatever we’re doing. Often, I think we all forgot how to breathe. It’s not that we’re not always doing it, but it’s more that we breathe in such a way that is incompatible with relaxation. We breathe using our chest more than our abdomen, hold our breath more often then we probably know, or breathe too rapidly or shallowly, and all of this changes our blood chemistry and sends the message to our brain that something potentially dangerous is happening. To get out of this cycle, a good starting point is to simply observe and notice how you are breathing. Notice where and how you draw breath into your lungs, look for times when you are switching from one activity to the next, and notice whether you are holding your breath in anticipation of the next thing. When you feel anxious, notice changes to your breathing. Spent some time each day practicing diaphragmatic breathing, which involves drawing breath in from your diaphragm or abdomen, rather than from expanding your chest and raising your shoulders. This is probably the most common coping skill taught to people who have anxiety disorders, but even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder, diaphragmatic breathing can introduce a calming sense of balance into your every day activities. I’ll spend some time in another blog talking about other stops to re-learn how to relax. ~ Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.