We have all experienced it: that phone call letting you know a loved one is in trouble, turning over an exam paper to find a question you don’t know how to answer, waking up to news of a catastrophe somewhere in the world. Your forehead beads with sweat, your heart beats faster. For some of us, the body’s natural response to stress balloons into a full-blown panic attack. But what if simply learning how to use your breath could help “breathe away” your anxiety?

A growing body of evidence shows some conscious breathing techniques work to lower anxiety and improve mood. In one 2023 study, a Stanford medical team found five minutes a day of “cyclic sighing” – a controlled breathing exercise that stresses long exhalations – led to greater increases in positive feelings than mindfulness meditation, a proven tool for reducing anxiety and stress.

There are many videos on the Internet that can help you explore anxiety-reducing breathing techniques. For David Procyshyn, the founder of the Canadian website doyogawithme.com, the search for relief from pain, sleeplessness and other symptoms of his own debilitating chronic anxiety led him to create a program that incorporates both rapid and slow breathing techniques with mindfulness exercises. “I wanted to learn to let go of the grip that anxiety had on my life,” said Procyshyn in a recent online workshop. He encourages anxiety sufferers “to learn to shift your relationship to your anxiety, even if it’s deeply set.”

“Embrace it as part of you,” he says, but “don’t get stuck in it.”

“One thing that really helped me a lot,” he said, “was finally realizing that I was not the only one experiencing this.” In 2019 the World Health Organization estimated that 4 per cent of people live with an anxiety disorder –– yet only a quarter of them receive any kind of treatment. Learning how to breathe effectively seems like a simple first step.

Find help for anxiety: amiquebec.org/anxiety

–Loreen Pindera
From Share&Care Spring 2025

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