 Okay, we're going to try something a little bit different that I have never done before. And for those of you that have the download link for this, hopefully it's going to be helpful. And if you have any feedback, I will certainly take it and we'll see where this goes from here. So what we're going to do here is we're going to do a little three minute exercise together. And I'm going to teach you what it actually looks like to relax and surrender into anxiety and panic. I get asked to do this all the time. People want to know like, well, what does that look like? I know you say to float. I know you say to surrender, give up, let it all happen. What does it look like? So I'm going to try and actually teach you what it looks like. You hear me use three things all the time. Relax your body, breathe from your belly and focus somewhere other than on the thoughts and sensations. So we're going to learn to relax, breathe and train our focus where we want it to be. And this exercise is going to use our breath, but it could be anything. So what is this not? This is not a rescue tool. This is not designed to like save you from panic. It's not going to stop a panic attack dead in its tracks. It's not going to make your anxiety go away. It might not even make you feel any better. It's not supposed to do that. What we're doing here is we're learning a skill and building a tool that you will use as part of this new way of dealing with anxiety and panic that you're learning. So what I want you to do, I'm going to have you do it for three minutes and I'm going to talk you through it. I hope this is something that you will ultimately practice multiple times every day because this is not something that you do once and like know how to do it. You have to actually practice it over and over, learn how to do it, get good at it, just like learning a new language. So what I want you to do is find a comfortable place to sit or lie. So if this is all new to you, ultimately you will be able to use this tool even while you're up walking around working at school, even driving. But for now, when you're just learning it, you're going to learn it in a stationary position. So I want that to be either laying down or sitting in a comfortable chair somewhere. So find a comfortable place to either sit or lay and we're going to start off by scanning your body for tension and releasing it. We're going to go from your head down to your toes. So when you're comfortable, try and get into as neutral a position as possible and let go of all the tension in your body, all of it. All right, so we want no tension anywhere in your body. Just relax, let go of all of it, all of it and now let's start from the top of your head. Check the top of your head, the muscles in your scalp. Is it tight? Now those are involuntary muscles, but do you feel any tension there? Do you feel any tension in your forehead? Are you crinkling your forehead? Close your eyes. Let's do this with your eyes closed. But gently close your eyes. Is there any tension around your eyes in the front of your face? Let's move down to your jaw. Your jaw should be slack. Open your mouth if you have to. But the preferred position that we want to get to is mouth closed, jaw unhinged, tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. Then a nice relaxed position. So take the tension out of your jaw. Now let's go to your neck. Is there any tension in your neck? Are you holding tension in your neck? Your neck should be in a neutral position, relaxed. Not craned forward or back or off to the side or twisted. So take the tension out of your neck. Then we're going to go to your shoulders. Wear your shoulders. Drop them down. They do not need to be up around your ears. That's tension. So relax. Let your shoulders fall to the lowest position they will go to naturally. Now move up to the front. Is there any tension across the wall of your chest? There might be. This is really common. You cannot relax your chest wall muscles. But do your best to let go of whatever you can that you feel there. Then I want you to go back down to your tummy. Is there any tension in your abdominal muscles? Are you tensing? Are you tight? Like you're ready to take a punch in the stomach. Let go. Let go completely. Especially if stomach upset is an issue for you. Just let it be upset if it's upset. But let go of the tension in your stomach muscles. Now let's go back to your arms. Open your hands and let your hands be open in their natural position. No flexing. No fists. Just let them fall open in a natural position. No tension. Keep those shoulders down. Release the tension in your arms. Now let's move back to your legs. Is there any tension in the top of your legs? Your thighs or your quads? Let go. If you're sitting, go into a neutral position where the chair is supporting you. You don't have to grip the floor. You shouldn't have to actively hold yourself up. Let gravity do its job to keep you in the chair. So release all the tension in your thighs and your quads. Make sure that you are not clenching your glutes. Very common. Let go. And then let's go down to your calves and your toes. Make sure there is no tension there. Let your feet just be in a natural neutral position. You don't have to flex or exert any sort of muscle control there. And make sure your toes, just give them a little wiggle. No tension. You don't need to be gripping the floor or the inside of your shoes. So let's go quickly back up to the top of your head. Just scan slowly down your face, your neck, your shoulders especially. Down your arms into your hands. Your chest and stomach especially. Through your legs all the way down through your calves and your feet. Make sure that there is no tension anywhere there. And every few seconds just make sure, if any comes back, you're just going to re-release it. That might happen. It's okay. You're learning. You're learning this. It's not going to be perfect. Now that we've got the tension out of your body, now let's look at your breath. So I want you to start breathing into your belly. Not your chest and not your shoulders. There's no reason to have your shoulders moving. There's no reason to have your chest moving. When you inhale, your belly should expand. So inhale into your belly. Pause for a second and exhale. I want the inhale to be through your nose. A very brief pause. And then a nice gentle slow exhale through your mouth. So your exhale should be longer than the inhale. This will keep you from over-breathing and hyperventilating. So breathe into the belly. Expand your belly. Hold for a second. Gentle exhale. Longer than the inhale through your mouth. And just let that come naturally. Relax all the tension that's in your body again and again and again. You may have to continually do that over and over. That's totally fine. If you find any tension, let it go and just breathe in and out. This may be incredibly uncomfortable for you right now because you are not tensing and you're not doing anything to react to what you feel. So you're going to feel it very intently. So now I want you to take a few more of those breaths. No tension. Just let it be there. You're safe. In through the nose. Quick pause. Out through the mouth. Always in and out of the belly and the abdomen. Never the chest and the shoulders. So now what I want you to do is take your focus and put it at the tip of your nose because when you inhale, you will feel the sensation of the air entering your nose. You'll feel it running across your nose. Just focus on that. And if you have to, gently say to yourself, breathing in. Then a pause. Breathing out. Focus on the sensation of the air entering your nose and then leaving through your lips. Into the belly. No tension in your body. So now that we know where we want our focus to be and when those thoughts, anxious and fearful thoughts are coming and sensations in your body are coming, it's okay. Let them come. The object of this game is to just bring your focus back to your breath. So stay relaxed. Stay relaxed. No tension. Just breathe the way I taught you. We're going to do three minutes. I'm going to be pretty much silent while we do it. Ready? This is going to be scary and uncomfortable for you. If it is, that's okay. It's supposed to be. This is practice. You're going to do it over and over. All right, ready? We're going to do our three minutes starting right now. Breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in and breathing out. You do it without me. If you're tensing, release it again. If you're having thoughts and you wind up engaging with them, that's okay. Just bring your focus back to the sensation of your breath. Gentle breaths in and out. Excellent. You've already done a minute. That's a minute of not tensing and not reacting against the anxiety. Let's keep going. Releasing the tension. When you feel bracing, when you feel tension, just re-release it. Keep breathing. When those thoughts come in your head, just let them come. You don't have to stop them. It's not bad for you to think them. Just bring your focus right back to the sensation of your breath, entering your nose, exiting your mouth. And through the nose, hold out through the mouth. You've done two minutes. Notice how your breath feels when it enters your nose. You can feel it around the rim of your nose. Notice what it feels like when it leaves through your lips. Purse your lips a little bit. Just focus on that sensation. No tension, no bracing, no fighting. Just breathing and just putting your focus where you want it on your breath. No fighting. That was three minutes. You did it. You did it. You did three minutes of doing nothing but breathing and releasing your tension and focusing where you wanted your focus to be. And it may have been scary and it may have been uncomfortable and it may have been very foreign and awkward for you to do this, but that's okay. That's okay. So while you're listening to me now, just keep the tension out of your body. Keep re-releasing the tension. Focus on the breath when you need to. It's totally fine. You're not trying to stop the thoughts. You're not trying to stop the sensations. You're just learning to be non-reactive when they come. And what we're doing here is we're actually speaking to the fear center in our brains. It only understands body language. It doesn't understand words. It doesn't understand logic. It only understands this. So when you do this, you are sending signals to your brain that say, this is uncomfortable, but I'm totally okay. And over time, the fear center in your brain begins to adapt and say, oh, I don't have to sound an alarm when I have those thoughts or have those sensations. So I hope you're still laying or sitting. Just keep re-releasing the tension. Scan from the top down. Breathe into the belly, not the chest and the shoulders. And bring your focus back to your breath. So what I'd like you to do is schedule some time over the next few days to practice this again and again and again. Take a little three-minute breaks. Get comfortable. Scan for tension. Check your breathing. Go into your belly breathing. And then just focus on your breath. Give yourself three minutes at a time. If you want to do more, excellent. You go as long as you want. And the more you practice this, the better it is you're going to get at it. All right. So that's our little three-minute exercise. You did really well. Thanks for giving a shot at this. I know it's new for me, too, to teach this. So let me know what you think. Your feedback is welcome. And we'll modify it from there. OK. See you soon.