Breathing Retraining in PTSD: A Practical Exercise

[@BadddDoggg-id4po]

Severe PTSD here. I'm sitting here at work going crazy, feeling like I'm about to jump out of my skin, severe fight or flight with a non stop adrenaline feeling not able to sleep or eat. HOLY COW this works like a charm! At the end of this video all of my bad feelings went away, I actually almost fell asleep. Thank you so much for this!

[@dakshsbhardwaj8007]

Thank you very much. I had to sift through hundreds of videos to get here. Few videos had practical exercises. They just talked a lot about the effects of breathing. The other ones just focused on feeling relaxed, but did not give precise instructions as to stressful thoughts. I do not have anxiety, but I do have stressful thoughts from the past overpowering my mind. This exercise should help.

[@cherylwilsherlimberlife7210]

The gulping response is the nervous system releasing

[@marcus_ohreallyus]

I've been trying to fix my breathing issues, which are mainly taking short, choppy breaths and subconsciously holding my breath. I find that the only time I can consistently breath perfectly for an extended time is on a walk. I can do slow nasal breaths (about 5 per minute) without missing a single breath on an hour walk. I'm finding that there's been some carry-ever to non-walking time during the day.

[@Sharazar.0]

Thank you, Dr. Barbara

[@GrimFrog90]

This is a great concept and I’m definitely going to implement it, I was just wondering should the timing of the exercise be a little slower? I found that by the time I had taken my breath you were already halfway through calm and I couldn’t keep up making me more anxious 😅

[@Lkyldyla]

Very calming voice

[@76helpingdogs]

It starts out with pause 2, 3, 4 and then moves on to only a one second pause so it totally changes pace in the middle

[@fido5067]

Are you trying to kill me? Midway through the breathing exercise you instructed to hold my breath and breathe out saying caaaaaaaalm.... what about breathing in?

[@Lyf-3276]

She actually says say “calm” silently in your head. For the purpose of the exercise, she is saying it out loud.

[@hustlemami8732]

This was so weird, my solar plexus started jolting when I did this breathing