export_ofoct.com (1)
[00:00.41] With one breathing exercise, she breaths in through one nostril and then out through the other.
[00:09.70] She uses a thumb or forefinger to hold one nostril closed at a time.
[00:18.73] “It relaxes my mind.
[00:21.65] It makes my mind so full of ease.
[00:25.37] It brings you back to the present moment,” she added.
[00:30.68] To get ahead of anxiety before starting her workday, sales representative Lindsay Carlisle of Michigan does breathing exercises with her seven-year-old daughter during their drive to school.
[00:49.01] They breathe in for seven counts, hold their breath for five, and then breathe out for seven counts.
[00:59.11] They repeat this several times.
[01:02.56] “Throughout that process, my shoulders start to drop on their own, and it really is calming,” Carlisle said.
[01:13.98] Suze Yalof Schwartz was an overworked magazine editor when her mother-in-law taught her a three-minute meditation method.
[01:24.87] Yalof Schwartz says it changed her life.
[01:28.86] She left her career and founded Unplug Meditation, a Santa Monica, California, company with a meditation studio, an app, and programs for corporate customers.
[01:44.26] “When we slow down our breath, we send a signal to our brain that everything’s OK, even when it’s not,” she said.
[01:55.68] Another 16-second breathing exercise is called box breathing.
[02:02.59] You breathe in for four counts, hold for four, breathe out for four counts and hold for another four.
[02:13.75] Yalof Schwartz has taught it to people in stressful jobs including firefighters, police and doctors.
[02:23.57] “It is the best thing that you can do at work before you have a meeting, before you send out an email that you wish you didn’t send, before you have a difficult conversation, because it just calms you down, gets rid of your negative energy,” she said.
[02:44.82] Employers such as Coca-Cola, Mattel and Netflix have used Unplug Meditation to teach breathing or meditation.
[02:57.57] It is not always easy for workers to find space for deep breathing exercises.
[03:05.54] For example, salespeople often work alongside their customers. Yalof Schwartz suggests doing breathing exercises when making a sale or organizing items.
[03:23.87] Carlisle, the sales representative, sets a timer on her phone telling her to breathe deeply.
[03:32.37] She also keeps a note near her computer that simply says “Breathe.”
[03:40.60] “The anxiety is always going to be there,” Carlisle said.
[03:45.65] “But at least I know I have one small tool. ... It sounds so simple and silly, but it works.”
