Jun 9 • Viki Thondley

Reduce Anxiety with this 4 step Practice

Reducing anxiety is a top priority for many, but even with plenty of tools and practices to employ, knowing what anxiety is helps to first understand why and how these practices can help reduce anxiety before it truly takes hold.
Reducing anxiety is a top priority for many, but even with plenty of tools and practices to employ, knowing what anxiety is helps to first understand why and how these practices can help reduce anxiety before it truly takes hold.

A simple definition is that anxiety is caused by an overload of fear, worry and doubt in the thinking mind, which activates the autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic branch of ‘fight or flight' responses.

Repetitive stimulus (thoughts, perceptions, memories, fears) can eventually overstimulate the sympathetic branch, causing it to become sensitive and easily activated, even when it's not necessary.

As we become sensitive to these unconscious and habitual patterns driving our fear-based reactions, the sympathetic system remains on ‘high alert’, thereby becoming conditioned to react with hyperactivity in response to triggers that we feel or sense are similar to the originating event, intense memory, or fear perception.

The more our autonomic nervous system learns to mobilise energy to thoughts of past experiences or future fears, the less logic and reasoning we have access to. This is because our prefrontal cortex goes offline when lower brain regions, involved in safety and survival responses, are active and dominant.

With enough repetition, our system defaults to the same conditioned responses, driven by the threat perception of the overstimulated Amygdala (threat perception centre). This in turn prolongs and exacerbates our experience of stress, anxiety, and feeling stuck in place (freeze, shutdown).

The quickest way to step out of this pattern is by learning how to pull your mind out of past rumination or future catastrophizing and bring yourself back into the safety of present moment awareness.

Utilising the breath and our five senses can bring our prefrontal cortex - our conscious, problem-solving mind - back online to exert top-down intervention and help create a sense of safety within our neurophysiology.

"The easiest and most effective ways to do this is by recognising signs of stress – rapid shallow breathing into the chest, holding your breath, heat rising in the head or neck, nervous energy, queasy stomach – and immediately taking conscious control of your breathing."

When you continually develop awareness of the early warning signs, you can practice effectively disrupting the old pattern and bringing awareness and acceptance through your breath.

There are various breathing techniques such as box breathing (counting in for four, holding for four, out for four, holding for four), double inhale/long exhale, and yoga nidra.

However, the easiest technique to employ is simply conscious, focused diaphragmatic breathing (sometimes referred to as ‘belly breathing’, although anatomically inaccurate) where the breath is drawn down into the lungs, expanding the diaphragm and massaging vital organs. This is designed to replace ineffective shallow breathing into the chest, which mimics fear and shock by short, sharp inhales not producing enough fresh oxygen for calm, clear thinking.

Reduce anxiety now in 4 simple steps:

1. Breathe in deeply, down into the belly. Keep your shoulders relaxed and still – they aren’t needed for breathing.

2. Exhale slowly to even your inhale. It’s often helpful to count your breath in and out to ensure a slow, even cycle that directs your focus away from the stressful or worrying reactive thoughts that are manifesting in your body and into the positive effects of conscious and mindful breathing.

3. Tune into your senses and notice what connects you to the support of the ground...
  • Feel the support of the surface underneath you.
  • Expand that awareness to what you can see around you that reminds you where you are right now.
  • Then listen to what compliments your sight and focus on nearby and far sounds.
  • Aim to hear your own breath.
  • Feel into your heartbeat. 
  • Then breathe into your heart space, connecting you to the sights and sounds around you.
  • Breathe into the air and notice your breathe slowing down with a gentle ebb and flow.
  • Notice the feeling of the ground underneath you again.
  • Then deepen your senses with the taste in your mouth, on your tongue, in the air.
  • Breathe deeper.
  • Move your focus into your body and begin to settle your being right there, in your body, in the moment.
  • Notice the shift in your mood and state.

4. In times of panic and no real threat, consciously remind yourself that you are safe. Say out loud, “Right now, in this moment, I am safe and all is well”. You can even focus on an instructional phrase, such as “I am breathing in, I relax as I exhale”. Naming our experiences utilises different cortical regions in the brain involved in higher thinking and problem solving, thereby reducing reactivity and habitual reactions in the threat perception region.

When you interrupt the anxiety before it takes hold of you completely, you are able to consciously:
  • slow your heart rate.
  • calm your nervous system.
  • lower blood pressure.
  • reduce panic.
  • relax muscles.
  • quiet your reactive mind.
  • become conscious and aware in the moment.
  • choose how you want to feel.
  • release and replace conditioned patterns.


It does take effort to instil this pattern interrupt and develop conscious and mindful observation, whilst also accepting your feelings and sensations as they arise. It's a process that needs to be practiced daily to build autonomic capacity and emotional flexibility in dealing with uncomfortable situations or feelings that would otherwise automatically signal an anxiety response.

As you gradually increase your conscious awareness, your reactive thinking gets stopped in its’ tracks, disrupting the chemical and hormonal cascade that would otherwise follow and lead to hyper-arousal or overwhelm in your autonomic nervous system.

Even though the habit of conscious breathing won’t happen overnight, the act of bringing of yourself back into the present moment to experience calm and conscious awareness can happen instantly.

Without the full force of reactivity, your nervous system can relearn how to calm itself through conscious awareness, diaphragmatic breathing and activation of the parasympathetic nervous system (relaxation response), moving you out of the sympathetic, fear-based stress response.

With conscious repetition of these breathing practices you can begin to rewire your brain to change the reality of your experience, and therefore the experience of your nervous system.

Get your mind on board to help you visualise the new reality you’d like for yourself through mind-body tools like visualisation, meditation, heart awareness and progressive muscle relaxation exercises.

I teach these tools to nearly all my clients, with and without anxiety, and they have transformed their experience and enjoyment of life by creating a new reality, a new state, and a new energy

Consequently, they've learned how to take life into their own hands.

Image by Unsplash .

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