Welcome to episode 1,839 of the Daily Meditation Podcast. I'm Mary Meckley and I honor you for giving your self permission to slow down and connect to the best part of who you are. In today's episode, we continue along with our theme we're exploring

this week, which is how to manage social anxiety.

There are many kinds of anxiety and social anxiety is the most prevalent. If there was one particular

technique that worked the best when it comes to helping you manage anxiety.

I would dare say that would be a breathing technique.

When you are able to manage your breath, you're able to manage your emotional state. Your breath and your emotional state are

interconnected and if you remember, if you're a regular listener, a few series ago, I shared with you how to manage extreme stress or trauma and in that series you discovered

the threshold we have when it comes to managing stress and research seems to show that when your heart beats 100 beats it's very difficult to access your frontal lobes which help manage critical

thinking so you may react on impulse without thinking

through what you say or what you do so you might read all kinds of self-help books about how to manage social anxiety

by having more positive thoughts or visualizing yourself being successful as you do your next presentation

or whatever it is you are doing that causes social anxiety.

And these techniques can definitely work, but not if your heart rate is so high that you're not able to access your frontal lobes and

your critical thinking.

One of the best ways to manage your heart rate is by managing

your breath.

So I'll share with you a breathing technique you can do.

When you feel yourself, start to experience anxiety and your heart rate begin to beat faster.

You may notice you sweat, you may feel faint or nauseous.

Before you reach that stage is when you should do this breathing technique.

And as you do the technique, you're going to inhale and exhale through your nose.

This helps to keep your breath calm.

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