Mind going a million miles a minute? Slow down with this breathing exercise

During periods of panic, anxiety or confusion, one of the best strategies is to slow down and focus on your breath. Yes this is not new, and many people know about this, and still are not able to implement.

Our brains’ dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the thinking and planning department, is our short-term working memory, just like the RAM in our computers. If we occupy the RAM space of our brain with too much worry, the working memory can crash.

Mindfulness can get our thinking brain back to being usable and free, as it acts as a junk cleaner of our mind. As meditation can be challenging for many, one can use a simple breathing exercise to ‘reboot’ the RAM in our brains. This is known as the Five Finger Breathing.

Five Finger Breathing makes the use of many of your senses, including eyesight and touch along with an awareness of the multiple locations in your body, like your hands, nose and lungs. This helps you get back to reality and insulates you from the ongoing worry.