Welcome to episode 1,839 of the Daily Meditation podcast.

I'm Mary Megley 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 per minute or more, 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 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.

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