13231: One Simple Way To Ease Anxiety

Raw transcript:

i’m calmly excited about sharing
something with you today uh I was just
reminded of one of the simplest
easiest
ways to lessen anxiety when you’re
feeling
anxious and I just want to make a gift
of it to you in this episode of the VO
Heroes podcast
um I have a bit of an admission uh I’m
in the midst of uh taking a multi-part
seminar webinar on anxiety and it’s
offered via the entertainment community
fund which used to be called the Actors
Fund it’s called the Anxiety
Toolkit and the people running it are
just great they’re really calming and
soothing and supportive
and uh today they reminded me of
something that I’d known about from one
of our coaches Karen Eileen Gordon and
others that when you’re facing something
that really has you anxious and man who
isn’t faced with that on a daily basis
in today’s world um what can you do
without taking drugs without you know
having to uh go to great lengths with
technology ology to lessen that anxiety
what can you do and a version of
something called box breathing is what
was presented today reminded me of it
and uh I hadn’t used it in a while and
it was so effective and it’s really
simple uh their version of it was to
place one hand on your belly one hand on
your chest mostly so you can feel where
you’re
breathing because when you do this
breathing you want to be breathing uh
toward your belly you want to do
diaphragmatic breathing um that’s the
way they they uh they phrased it so when
you breathe you want to feel it in your
belly more than in your chest but what
you do is very simple their version of
it was you breathe in for a count of
four 4 seconds hold your breath for a
count of two seconds and then breathe
out for a count of 4 seconds i’ve seen
it various ways uh
444 64 really holding that breath in
there but it’s pretty simple well you
can close your eyes if you want to but
when you’re facing something that’s
really making you anxious this is one
way to bring down your stress level to
bring down your uh sense of being a
drift and it’s just uh feeling it in in
your belly feeling a deep breath and so
closing your eyes and breathing in 2 3 4
holding it 2 3 4 and then breathing out
two three
four and for me the very first one you
can do it more than once and most people
do they do it until they’re feeling less
stress and for me the very first round
of it just that 12
seconds made all the difference in the
world they’d asked us on a scale of 1 to
10 how anxious we felt and uh I wasn’t
feeling all that particularly anxious at
the time but it still brought my anxiety
down
and the reason I’m taking this
workshop is and this is kind of the
admission is I’ve been um I wouldn’t say
suffering is the right word but I’ve
noticed that there are times when out of
the blue I’ll feel extraordinarily
anxious and in the weirdest situations
I’ll be walking into the bathroom to
make some coffee or wash my hands or I
have my coffee my pourover coffee stuff
is in the bathroom um too much okay uh
but uh you know I’ll walk in there and
all of a sudden I’ll feel like
something’s wrong i’m missing something
something is broken or damaged or and I
know where this is coming from because I
I’ve had some issues in my condo over
the past 10 years with uh water leaks
and it’s given me a bit of PTSD over
water leaks and and so on it’s all
better now it’s all fixed everything’s
great uh but I do feel every so often
like am I missing something is something
going on and doing that box breathing
exercise that
four maybe I’ll try the two you know but
it works for me four four um it really
really helps and as performers we’re
presented with odd weird spur-of-the-
moment situations all the time you get
an audition you didn’t expect the
audition right uh you get pinned uh you
get asked for uh you know to appear
somewhere who who knows what what what
happens
much of what we do is out of the blue
it’s not predictable i feel like some
jobs it’s predictable you know CPAs
they’re pretty they’re pretty good on
this whole taxation season tax season at
the beginning of the year here in the
United States it’s it’s predictable but
for us everything seems to be a surprise
and sometimes great surprises and that
can cause anxiety
and I noticed that I got an audition on
Monday and I noticed I was feeling a
little anxious in a good way i was
excited more than anxious and I did the
box breathing and it helped it made me
It just settled me it just sort of
writed the ship so once again hand on
your belly hand on your chest breathe in
2 3 4 you can close your eyes if you
want to hold 2 3 4 breathe out 2 3 4 and
repeat as needed i’m no therapist i’m
just telling you what works for me if it
works for you
great what does work for you does that
Have you Have you seen that before have
you ever seen that kind of thing before
let me know let me know in the comments
below on
vioherooes.com uh that’s where the
conversation is nice and polite and sane
and sometimes people are doing box
breathing and you don’t even know it uh
you can hit the like button you can uh
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when that happens share this with a
fellow performer that you think might
need some little tool in their toolkit
to help them be less anxious i’d love
that i’m David H lawrence the 17th i
thank you so much for watching and for
listening and I will see you in the next
episode of the VO Heroes podcast

(from YouTube)