Mindful Breathing

Activity type:
Mindfulness

Learning goal:
It’s natural to take long, deep breaths, when relaxed. However, when a person is confronted with negative emotions, especially anger and anxiety, their body undergoes several changes and enters a special state called the fight-or-flight response. The body prepares to either fight or flee the perceived danger. During the fight-or-flight response it’s common to experience a “blank” mind, increased heart rate, sweating, tense muscles, and breathing becomes rapid and shallow. Deep breathing reverses that, and sends messages to the brain to begin calming the body. Practice will make the body respond more efficiently to deep breathing in the future and will help trainees calm down in cases they face strong emotions.

Specificities:
The activity can be implemented either individually or in a group. In both cases after the mindfulness technique, trainees will discuss in group their experience.

Duration:
30 minutes

Materials:
Deep breathing audio file.

---

Instructions

Listen to the audio file and try to follow the given instructions and take deep breaths.

Questions for reflection:

• What was the experience like?
• Was it easy or difficult / why?
• Did you notice any thoughts or feelings come up during the exercise? What did you do when they came up?
• What did you learn from this activity?