 I'm sorry, I didn't see you come in. Welcome everyone to depression, to expression. My name is Scott, this video is dedicated to Dan. Dan, you know who you are. All the patrons know who Dan is. Dan gave me this incredible tip. He's a supporter of the channel. If you wanna know more about Patreon and the Discord group we have going in the community where we share tips, tricks, exclusive videos, my ebook, blah, blah, blah, it's all in the bio. Let's get serious now. First things first, Scott, why don't you have a shirt on? A, YouTube is YouTube. I don't, I don't care. Come on, man, we're just making videos talking about mental health, anxiety, and trying to become better people. I got skin, you got skin. Come on, let's loosen up a little bit. If you wanna take your shirt off and you wanna learn a little bit and watch some depression, to expression on YouTube, you have the right to do so. Live your life, baby. Okay, square breathing. What am I talking about here? If you've experienced anxiety in the past, please fill in the blank. Anxiety makes me feel like, please fill in the blank in the comments because a lot of us experience anxiety differently. For me, it's the feeling that the world is closing and space is getting tighter and tighter and tighter and there's a feeling of no escape. There's a very gross feeling. I don't know how else to put it. I've tried many times. Please fill in the blank. So some get sweaty palms. Sometimes our hearts beat faster. Sometimes we have trouble breathing, right? Sometimes the thoughts are what get us to. When we start to feel a little anxious, what makes anxiety worse sometimes is saying, what if anxiety gets worse? What if somebody sees me? What if I faint? What if I throw up? What if I make a fool out of myself? What if I get fired for being anxious at work? What if I have a full blown panic attack? The thoughts then create this feeling and behavior within us that doesn't, at the end of the day, help us out when we feel this way. The great thing about square breathing, which I'm going to talk about and we're gonna do a little practice run as well, is it brings you back into the body. Breathing, the thing we do so unconsciously that when we actually bring our attention and focus back to it, it can be very therapeutic. So what square breathing is, is if you've passed kindergarten, you know what a square is. High, high, high, high, four equal sides. And what we do is you can, the great thing about this technique is you can sit, you can stand, you can be in the bathroom, you can be driving to work. It doesn't matter, you can be in your cubicle, you can be at your desk, you can be walking, doesn't matter. Four sides, the breathing technique of square breathing goes like this. You inhale for four seconds, you hold it for four seconds, you exhale for four seconds and you hold it for four seconds. And it repeats as many times as you like until the anxiety subsides. And it will, it will. The great thing about this technique too, so a few things. One is I actually like to trace the square with my hand. Again, it's bringing focus to something else other than your anxious thoughts and what's actually happening in the moment that you're worried about. It's coming back to the body. The more we can bring back to the body, the better, right? That grounding of breathing, that grounding. So inhale, hold, exhale, hold. You can trace this with your finger. Now you're thinking, Scott, I'm in a board meeting, right? I'm at work, I'm at a party, I'm at my friend's house, I don't wanna sit there going, hey, hey, hey, hey, I get it. So what can you do? You can put your hand in your pocket if you wanna keep tracing. Put your hand behind the back if you wanna keep tracing. You don't have to, but it can definitely be hidden because I get it, it could look kind of weird if you're tracing things in the air at work. I totally get that. Okay, let's do a practice together. We're just gonna do it once for now, get comfortable, and then we're gonna do it three times after that. Three cycles, three cycles, four sides of square. That's 12 sides. Here we go. We're gonna do four seconds a side. Inhale, one, two, three, four. Hold your breath, one, two, three, four. Exhale, one, two, three, four. And hold, one, two, three, four. Simple as that. The cool thing is you can do two seconds if that was too long for you. You can do six seconds if you have some big, juicy lungs. I'm a swimmer, I'm a runner. Part of it's genetic, a little more capacity in the lungs, but I like to do six seconds for my square breathing. We're gonna do a session together right now. Ready? Gonna do it together. I'm gonna breathe with you. Now, I'll go four seconds with you, but I'm also going to trace. Another thing I like to do when you're tracing the square that helps me out more visualization is I tick each second across. So it's not a solid line, it's almost dashes that I'm picturing as the square. So it's one, two, three, four, one, two, right? You can do squigglys, one, two, three, four. You can picture different colors as each number, right? It can be a soft blue that you're picturing as the square. It's totally up to you. Okay, here we go. Three, two, one. Isn't that awesome? I hope you enjoyed the square breathing. Please let me know if you like it. Please subscribe, plenty of depression and anxiety tips here on Depression to Expression. All links below for my mental health picks, therapy, hotlines if you need them. Thank you so much for joining and I'll see you soon and stay strong, keep being you.