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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
experience. Before the training, it is very important to know the
difference between the “chest” breathing and “abdominal”
breathing. If you work with clients, you have to show them how
to breathe into the abdomen. Teach them to breathe in the
rhythm of 8 - 12 breaths in a minute with a short pause between
the breathing in and out. At the beginning it is necessary to find
such a breathing rhythm that will be the most suitable for them.
You can record this rhythm and they will take this recording
home. In this way they can practise calm “abdominal” breathing
also at home. When they get used to it, they will not need this
recording and they will be breathing calmly alone (Možný,
Praško, 1999). You can apply also other variants of calming
breathing:
Breathing realaxation (psychophysical relaxation)
(Žáčková, Jucovočová, 2000)
Lay down or sit as comfortably as possible and we focus on our
breath, how the air flows while breathing. It enters our nose,
continues to our lungs, we focus on how our belly rises up and
also the chest and area under the collar bones. While breathing
out everything descends slowly back and the airflow leaves by
mouth from our body. During breathing relaxation we can count
how many times we breathe in and breathe out (similar as we
count sheep before sleeping). Slowly we stop focus on our
breath and we try to imagine some peaceful place (beach, sea,
sun). If we want to achieve deep rest or falling asleep, we
imagine, how we are falling asleep on the beach under
a sunshade and we hear the sounds of the sea. If we would like
to be more ready for another work, we can imagine that on the
beach came a couple kids who are playing and are merry. We
want to join them so we wake up and breath in deeply, stretch,
stand up, and feeling relaxed and refreshed we join them.
Breathing exercises
(Žáčková, Jucovočová, 2000)
First rehearsal abdominal/diaphragm breathing. Lay down on
your back, put your hand on your abdomen and focus on
breathing while it moves up and down. Later start to breath into
the abdomen to make it move as obviously as possible. We
imagine a picture of a balloon that inflates and deflates or a big
inflatable balloon, that we will travel by for a trip. We also could
put another light object, such as a book, on our abddomen, and
focus on how it move with the abdomen up and down. After that
we train chest breathing. We put a hand on the chest and focus
on it´s fall and rise.
Calming counting
(Wilson, 1986, in: Možný, Praško, 1999)
During the moments of high tension and anxiety breathe in
through your nose into the abdomen and then breathe out
slowly. By breathing out say to yourself quietly “Calm…”
Continue in this way of breathing and start counting backwards
in your mind. Start with the number 10 and finish with 1. If you
still feel tense and anxious, repeat this counting. While counting,
notice which parts of your body are tense. Imagine that this
tension is disappearing. When you come to number 1 and your
tension is alleviated, you can continue with the activity you were
doing before this calming breathing.
Know your anxiety (Praško et al., 2006)
People experience anxiety in different ways. We do not have the
same physical feelings and behaviour in stressful situations, we
have other anxious thoughts in our mind. In addition to this, we
react anxiously to different impulses.
Before you start learning how to cope with your anxiety, you
have to examine it thoroughly. The best way is to record the time
when you felt anxious, the physical feelings you had, what you
were thinking about and what you were doing. It is also useful to
try to evaluate how strongly you experienced anxiety in
particular situations (with a range from 0 to 10). Record all such
anxious feelings during one or two weeks and then read your
records carefully. Maybe you will find out that you are able to
answer these questions:
1.
What situations, animals or things provoke my anxiety?
2.
What physical feelings and anxious thoughts do I have in a
stressful situation?
3.
Does the intensity of my anxiety change in different
situations?
4.
What do I usually do when I feel anxiety?
5.
What helps me to cope with my anxiety?
Know your ways of coping with anxiety (Praško et al., 2006)
It is very important to differentiate between those ways of
coping with anxiety that could help us for longer time and those
ways that only alleviate our anxiety for a while, but they are
rather harmful from a long-term point of view. Suitable ways of
coping with anxiety for longer time include: physical exercises,
a contact with kind people, pleasant activities or supporting
dialogue with yourself. Only temporary ways of coping with
anxiety include: excessive overeating, chocolate, cigarettes,
coffee, tranquilizing pills, alcohol, avoiding of stressful
situations, swearing, and self-criticism. Make a table with two
columns and write suitable strategies in one column and
unsuitable strategies in the other one. Determine situations when
you often use a particular strategy. Think about alternative and
more suitable ways of coping with anxiety that could substitute
those strategies that are not effective and good for you. (Praško
et al., 2006).
Our feelings and acting
(Piačková, 2002 - modified by Müller
de Morais, 2018)
Emotions are usually connected with something, they never
appear on their own. When we think about that vicious circle,
then we understand that what we feel is influenced by what we
do and how we think. For example, you can feel anxiety when
you have to speak in a foreign language. However, at home you
feel relaxed. Or you like reading books in a foreign language in
your free time, but you feel stressed when you have to talk about
them to other people. You can also notice that you have other
feelings when you are with different people. For example, you
feel relaxed when you talk with a friend from a foreign country,
but you are nervous when you present something to a strict
teacher at the lesson of a foreign language. If we summarize
these facts, you will probably start noticing this model:
What am I doing?
How do I feel?
What do I think?
I am at school and I have to present my
work in a foreign language.
I am talking with a friend in a foreign
language.
Stressed and anxious.
Relaxed, calm and joyful.
I will fail.
I will not be able to do it in front of my
classmates.
It is great to talk like this with my friend.
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