Vanessa's Blog - April: Strategies for deep breathing
Deep breathing is a good way to calm down when we are anxious, or ideally to use proactively when anxiety starts to rise, supporting us to keep calm. It might be a reactive strategy, or it might be a planned and timetabled part of the day, such as calming time before when arriving in school in the mornings, or getting in after play. It may be something you can do in preparation before tests or activities that you expect to cause a higher level of stress. Lots of young people benefit from deep breathing, but struggle to do this is an effective way without a bit of structure and guidance. This is a list of some of the possible models you can use. Breathing is very personal and not all of these strategies will work for all people.
Top tips
1. The best approach will be to teach these to your young people when they are calm and then provide them with a list that they can choose from when the strategies are needed for real.
2. Adult modelling is a great way to learn
3. For most breathing techniques, 3 breathes is usually enough to get calm, but not so may that we risk getting dizzy!
4. Ideally, we breathe in through the nose and out through mouth, but this is not always practical for children with medical conditions or stuffy noses, so don’t get to fixed on that.
Smell the flower, blow out the candle
This works well for young people who benefit from a visual prompt. A picture card shows a flower on one side and a candle on the other, to guide a deep breath in (smelling) and a long breath out (blowing). The pictures don’t need to be candles and flowers; whatever works for your young person!
Square Breathing
This strategy takes account of the little pauses in our breath, which is useful for young people who tend to huff in and out very quickly when asked to breathe deeply. The square shape can be drawn in the air with a finger, or just visualised to guide a breath in, a pause, a breath out and a pause. Everyone with have a different size square - the key is to find a size that allows for the square to have equal length sides, without the pauses being uncomfortable.
Finger breathing
This is another strategy for slowing things down and giving children something to focus on. It works best for young people who have the manual dexterity to trace around the fingers of one and with the index finger of the other hand, to guide their breaths in and out.
Puppet Breathing
This is a nice whole-body strategy for young people with a good imagination. Ask the young person to imagine that they are a puppet, or a marionette. If you have one, you could model it first. They stand up and take a deep breath. On the breath out, flop forwards, as if someone had dropped the strings. Then take a deep breath in, imagining the strings are picked back up and the puppet is pulled back to standing. 
Cloud breathing
This is a good one of helping young people to focus their mind. Use a picture or a classroom display of clouds. On the right sort of day you may be able to go outdoors and use the real thing! As children breathe in and out, they use their finger to trace the outline of the clouds. This can be done with other pictures, such as flowers or blob shapes if that is more appealing to your young people.
The following strategies are good for practice, but may not make your list for ‘in the moment’ strategies, as they will not be practical to do anywhere, anytime!
Dragon Breathing
For young people who have a lot of anger or frustration, dragon breathing can provide a useful release. It is not suitable for all classrooms or homes, as it involves a lot of noise. Children get on all fours like a dragon, or sit up nice and straight, take a deep breath in and then roar it out!
Trampoline tummy
This is a useful strategy for teaching young people to take deep breathes from their diaphragm. They lay on their backs and balance a toy or bean bag on their tummy. Ask them to breath in to the count of three and out for thee, but they need to try and move the toy up and down, or push it off altogether.
