Deep Breathing to Relieve Stress

Deep breathing has been proved to relieve stress.

Why do we use deep breathing?

At Everly Grace, we start each facial with three deep belly breaths. This is very intentional and not only meant to set the tone of the experience to a calm one and relieve stress from outside the room. We have you take deep belly breaths, where your stomach and waist expands while your chest remains more or less flat. This is also called diaphragmatic breathing. This type of breathing has many benefits that affect your entire body. While this is at the foundation for almost all meditation or relaxation techniques, which can lower your stress levels, reduce your blood pressure, and regulate other critical bodily processes.

Breath and Stress

“The term "fight or flight" is also known as the stress response. It's what the body does as it prepares to confront or avoid danger. When appropriately invoked, the stress response helps us rise to many challenges. But trouble starts when this response is constantly provoked by less momentous, day-to-day events, such as money woes, traffic jams, job worries, or relationship problems. Moreover, the buildup of stress can contribute to anxiety and depression. We can't avoid all sources of stress in our lives, nor would we want to. But we can develop healthier ways of responding to them. One way is to invoke the relaxation response, through a technique first developed in the 1970s at Harvard Medical School by cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson. The relaxation response is a state of profound rest that can be elicited in many ways, including meditation, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation.” source.

Teens and Stress

We see many teens at Everly Grace and can definitely see the effects of stress on skin when we see acne flareups. Stress does not cause acne, but can take a minor problem and amplify it. Teen’s hormones are involved in stress reactions stimulate the sebaceous glands to produce oils. The deep breathing to relieve stress technique is especially helpful with our teen facials, as we work to decrease the stresses that come in our teenage years.