Dave Wood

And breathing is tethered to every single emotional state.

Stress, pressure, fear, apprehension, tension, overwhelm, all activate your body's stress response, increase your breathing rate and depth.

Stress control, remember stress control is regulating your physical and mental state.

So when your breathing rate and depth increases because you are in a stress state, by taking control of your breathing and doing the opposite, slowing down, you are intercepting the stress response.

Doesn't mean you're not stressed.

It just means you have way more control of your internal state, which means you have more control of the situation, more control of your actions, more control of your outcomes.

It's not difficult.

Just consciously control your breathing.

But the thing with breathing is you don't have to think about it.

It's innovated by your autonomic nervous system.

You don't need to think about your breathing.

It's the one body system that's innovated by your autonomic nervous system that you can take conscious control of.

You can't take conscious control of your heart rate, your blood pressure, your pupil diameter, the digestion of your food, but you can take control of your breathing.

And because you can take control of it, you can slow it down.

And when you slow it down, it's like grabbing the dimmer switch.

And if you're pinging in the red, if you're really stressed, it's like grabbing the dimmer switch and dimming it back a little bit.

um if you think about a i've got this picture in one of my slides and it's cristiano ronaldo and he's kicking a um five minutes left of the game at the um soccer world cup um football world cup yeah and um yeah i called it soccer because when i was young it was just yeah uh five minutes left to go and it's this picture and he's he's standing there right and he's it's a video and he's

He's looking at the ball.

He's looking at the post.

So he's visualizing, right?