Have you ever noticed yourself going into a shallow breathing pattern when you get uptight about something? Or maybe this is just your regular breathing pattern and you don’t even notice it?
Well, I experienced a few episodes of just that recently. I had an incident where the landlord of my Pilates business failed to send me the invoices so that I can pay my rent. Basically if I don’t receive an invoice or a bill, the bill just doesn’t get paid, pretty sure that is how it works.
This has been happening quite a bit over the last few months and I have been really patient about it, managing to follow up myself and getting the invoice on time and paying the bill.
This month however was another story,
my rent due date came and went without an invoice. This might seem to be a minor problem for some people, but for me, I always pay my bills on time and from my perspective, if I am late that can reflect on my standing as a good tenant.
I started to notice myself going into a state of tension over this; I noticed that every time I thought about this mini problem, my breathing was becoming shallow and quick. I know this to be a definite sign of stress, and I didn’t like it.
So I called them – trigger shallow breathing. The next day I e-mailed – a little less shallow breathing because by this stage I noticed it going on. The day after that I called again – shallow breathing – again.
I waited patiently
waited patiently for a couple more days, and then I called again. By this time I was a bit cranky and the shallow breathing was back. It was fast by this stage, especially when I was highlighting their inefficiencies to them in my cranky voice.
I don’t like to be the demanding type but sometimes it just happens. I did get my invoice and I got my rent paid, though it was 10 days late much to my disgust. Turns out, there is a problem with the e-mails. Of course there was, technology seems to be the biggest cause of stress in businesses (oh speaking for myself here).
Well the good news
is that I got to practice some of my stress reducing breathing techniques that I had long forgotten about. When I applied these techniques, I felt relaxed, I felt calm and I felt so much more in control of the situation. Drama over, happy mind and body restored.
If you would like to find out more about these cool techniques and practice them with me, look out for the upcoming by 5 Secrets to Managing Stress Workshop. We can have some fun practicing them together and learn some more awesome ways to manage stress in our everyday lives.
Breath relax breath relax 🙂
Sandra Kelly www.pilatessuccess.com.au