How to Overcome an Anxiety Attack

You can overcome an anxiety attack, no pills required, with this simple breathing routine I’ve put together for you.

I call it Eight Minutes to Inner Peace, and it’s a routine I teach all my clients suffering from anxiety disorder.

If you have ever suffered anxiety disorder, you know how uncomfortable you can feel. Your heart can race. Your blood pressure goes up. Sometimes you feel like you can hardly breathe at all. Logical thinking stops in its tracks. Your brain gets totally highjacked.

From my perspective as a yoga teacher for the past 20 years and as a medical intuitive healer, I’d like to talk to you about what I think happens during an anxiety attack:

• Whenever you suppress your feelings, it takes a lot of energy to hold them all in, which has made you feel tired, often to the point of exhaustion. Perhaps your previous symptom was simply fatigue.
• You have suppressed your feelings for so long the energy has built up inside you to a boiling point.
• Sometimes life just gives you one more thing. It could even be a little thing. But you reach the point where you feel you can’t handle anything else, and the energy finally boils over, causing you to suffer an anxiety attack.

Sound familiar?

It could happen once, which is bad enough, but if you keep on suppressing your feelings, you could have multiple anxiety attacks causing you to become close to non functional.

Now let’s talk about the solution.

I like to teach as many people as possible about Eight Minutes to Inner Peace because when you know what to do, you won’t need to take medication. You won’t need to take herbs or natural healing remedies. You won’t even need to talk about what’s bothering you -all you have to do is use your breath to release the pent up energy and emotions.

Even though talking can be and often is highly beneficial, sometimes your anxiety level is so high you don’t feel safe enough to discuss what’s really going on with anybody.

I like Eight Minutes to Inner Peace because it provides an elegant solution requiring no pills, no equipment, no coach and you can do it anytime anywhere.

All you need is yourself.

Let me summarize the benefits:

1. Inhale. When you are anxious, you are breathing primarily into your upper chest and not using your full lung capacity. This can cause you to feel light headed. By holding your belly and breathing deep into your abdomen, you begin to slow your heart rate, reconnect to your physical body and start feeling more grounded.
2. Exhale. During a true anxiety attack, you will not be exhaling hardly at all. If you look at the EKG of a person having an anxiety attack, you will notice that more than likely you inhale but there is not a full release of your breath or your emotions. The exhale allows you to start letting go.
3. Circular Breathing. This phase of the breath work routine allows you to begin balancing your nervous system. You balance the sympathetic side – which responds to stress – with the parasympathetic side – which allows you to relax. As you practice circular breathing, your EKG goes into entrainment. When that happens, you reconnect your heart and your head. You begin to produce your own natural tranquilizer neurotransmitters and think more clearly.
4. Bellows Breath. Once your nervous system has become ever so slightly more balanced, bellows breath allows you to move through your suppressed emotional material quickly and easily without having to discuss what’s going on. This is so crucial becomes often your brain has become hijacked by the anxiety attack and you can’t even fully express what’s bothering you. Energetically, you begin to clear your third chakra, which is the center of your psychic feelings.
5. Breath of Fire. You begin releasing the repressed emotional material in Bellows Breath. Breath of Fire simply speeds up this clearing process. Once again, you don’t even have to know what it is your releasing, you just blow out all the feelings that arise. You continue to clear the congestion in your third chakra and as you do you begin to feel more like yourself again.
6. Alternate Nostril Breathing. If you can only remember ONE exercise to stop an anxiety attack, this would be the one. In a perfect world, you would move through all the previous breathing exercises and then perform Alternate Nostril Breathing. This technique allows you to integrate the right and left hemispheres of your brain so that you can regain your capacity to think clearly. It stimulates your pituitary gland which in turn regulates your adrenal glands. In the videos I demonstrate performing each exercise for one minute. But you can spend as much time as you need to on Alternate Nostril Breathing until your anxiety calms completely.
7. Bumblebee Breath. This is my favorite breathing technique. What I like about Bumblebee Breath is that it allows you to clear out all the thoughts that have overloaded your mind. Often when you have an anxiety attack, thoughts fire so rapidly you feel mentally overcome to the point of emotional exhaustion. Traditionally you perform seven rounds of Bumblebee Breath. In the videos, I demonstrate for about a minute. You can even pause once you are done to enjoy how your mind feels clear once again.
8. Ocean Breath. Finally, I like to end breath work for anxiety with this deeply calming and grounding breath. By now, you will feel reconnected to your body, your blood pressure will begin to normalize, your mind will feel more clear, your emotions more balanced. Life looks a little brighter by this point!

Although there are many systems of breath work, I like Eight Minutes to Inner Peace the best because it allows you to move through all phases of clearing anxiety in a simple, elegant and pain-free manner.

This is the routine I use myself whenever I feel anxiety coming on.

To me, Eight Minutes to Inner Peace is like a symphony.

You start in the drama, in the overwhelm, panic and hopelessness and end with the true and honest feeling that you are going to be OK.

I use a variety of natural healing remedies, kinesiology, energy work and medical intuitive healing to empower you to resolve the sources of the issue.

If you suffer from anxiety disorder, I recommend you wake up in the morning and perform Eight Minutes to Inner Peace first thing. You’ll start the day feeling calmer.

Throughout the day, if anxiety rears its ugly head, employ Alternate Nostril Breathing until the feelings subside.

Then before you go to sleep, perform Eight Minute to Inner Peace as you prepare to go to bed.

Simple? Yes.

Free? Totally.

No pills to take? Thank goodness.

Is this effective? Send me an email once you have tried this even once and let me know how much better you feel!

If you are suffering from anxiety disorder, please know I am writing this blog for you and sending you love and light from my heart to your heart.

Bless your soul. You CAN feel better!

Now here’s the written directions for you to print out to take with you when you can’t sit in front of the computer or your smart phone to watch the videos:

EIGHT MINUTES TO INNER PEACE: Start by sitting or lying down in a comfortable position.

1.ONE MINUTE: Focus on lengthening your inhale.

2.ONE MINUTE: Focus on lengthening your exhale.

3.ONE MINUTE: Focus on making your inhale and exhale equally long and deep.

4.ONE MINUTE: Bellows Breath. Inhale into your belly and exhale forcibly by contracting your solar plexus.

5.ONE MINUTE: Breath of Fire. Inhaling and exhaling rapidly, pump your diaphragm. Your inhale will happen naturally.

6.ONE MINUTE: Alternate Nostril Breathing. Inhale through your right nostril. With the thumb of your right hand, close the right nostril. Exhale through your left nostril. With the ring finger of your right hand, close the left nostril. Exhale through your right nostril. Use your thumb to close your right nostril. Exhale through the left nostril. Use your ring finger to close the left. Repeat.

7.ONE MINUTE: Bumblebee Breath. Place your pointer finger and middle finger on your forehead. Place your thumbs on your ear flaps and close your ears. Place your ring finger lightly on your closed eyelids. Little finger rests on your cheekbones. Make a humming sound like a bee.

8.ONE MINUTE: Ocean Breath. Open your mouth, relax your jaw. Inhale and make the sound of the ocean in the back of your throat. Exhale and make the sound of the ocean. Close your lips and continue making the sound of the ocean.

You’ll also find this breath work routine discussed in depth in my Amazon No. 1 best seller, Unlimited Energy Now. 

• 8 Minutes

I've taught yoga now for 23 years and learned pranayama over the course of six 200-hour teacher trainings, one 500-hour teacher training and while studying yoga therapy. I teach this routine to all my clients suffering.