Phyllis Korkki’s Applied Science column in today’s Sunday New York Times offers good sensible advice about using conscious breathing, posture, and body awareness tools to reduce stress and anxiety on the job. These are simple mechanisms that we all know about but it’s easy to forget them.
Seeking some assistance in dealing with mounting stress, Korkki says, “My first stop was Belisa Vranich, a clinical psychologist who teaches — or rather reteaches — people how to breathe. Dimly I sensed that the way I was inhaling and exhaling was out of whack, and she confirmed it by giving me some tests. First off, like most people, I was a ‘vertical’ breather, meaning my shoulders moved upward when I inhaled. Second, I was breathing from my upper chest, where the lungs don’t have much presence.
“In her Manhattan studio, Dr. Vranich taught me the right way to breathe: horizontally and from the middle of the body, where the diaphragm is. You should expand your belly while inhaling through your nose, she said, and squeeze your belly inward while exhaling.l way to breathe — the way children and animals do it, Dr. Vranich said. It’s when society begins to exert its merciless pressure on us that we start doing things the wrong way.
illustration by Michael Waraska
food for the joybody 