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3 Breathing Exercise Methods on How to Reduce Caregiver Stress
You might not have known that breathing exercises are an excellent way on how to reduce caregiver stress when caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia. It’s well known that caregivers often suffer as much as the person they are taking care of each day.
If you’re looking to improve your ability to stay calm and collected under pressure, then there are numerous different techniques you can use. One of the most potent is to learn to control your breathing, which can immediately help you to feel calmer and avoid being pushed over into the stress response.
In this article, we’ll be looking at some breathing techniques you can employ to stay calm, as well as looking at some other techniques you can use to help you care for a dementia sufferer.
How to Reduce Caregiver Stress – 3 Breathing Exercise Tips
Equal Breathing – Equal breathing is a technique from yoga, which essentially requires you to breathe in and out through your nose. While doing this, you maintain your breath for an equal amount of time on the in-wards and out-wards breaths. So you might breathe out for 4 seconds and then breathe in for four seconds.
This helps you to empty your lungs and fill them with fresh oxygen. What’s more, the slow and deep breathing will allow you to trigger your ‘rest and digest’ state which is similar but slightly different to the ‘fight or flight’ state and is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. This is a great way to stave off a anxiety response.
Stomach Breathing – Another breathing technique to try is simply to breathe from the stomach as we are naturally designed to do. If you try breathing right now and note whether your stomach or chest moves first, you may well find that you breathe by leading with your chest. This limits the amount of oxygen you can take in with each breath and that can increase stress.
Instead, breathe by first allowing your abdomen to expand. Use your transverse abdominis and expand your abdominal cavity. This will allow your diaphragm to drop into that space, opening up your lungs. You can then follow by expanding your chest and you’ll have more space in total to take in more oxygen.
Power Positions – Power positions are positions that have been shown by research to trigger the production of testosterone and other positive, stress-fighting hormones. One is the ‘victory pose’. If you simply stand with your arms above you in a ‘V’ shape, as though you had just won a competition, this will increase your production of testosterone, helping you to feel more confident and more driven. Of course it’s best to do this somewhere private before your care-giving day begins, or after you finish a stressful day.
How to Reduce Caregiver Stress – Dementia Care Stress Management – Conclusion
Take a few extra minutes each day to try these breathing exercises to reduce stress. You will be surprised at how well they work. Don’t allow stress to build up in your life, because it can eventually affect your overall health.
