Deliberate Breathing for the SAT student
Dec 3rd, 2007 by Academics Plus Tutoring
We mentioned in one of our last blogs that deliberate breathing is a great way to beat SAT stress.
Here’s why.
One of the negative effects of stress is a change in breathing patterns. When students become anxious and tense, it is common for their breathing to become constricted. And if your breathing is shallow, two major things happen. Less of the good stuff (oxygen) comes in and less of the bad stuff (carbon dioxide) goes out. Shallow breathing can result in fatigue, irritability, mental confusion, lethargy, and even lead to more stress. In essence, lost SAT points. Here is a great breathing exercise that you can use, when feeling stressed:
Exercise your breath: Set aside 3 minutes to breathe deeply: Sit on a chair, identify one negative emotion you have felt about the SAT that you’d like to eliminate, and identify another, positive feeling that you’d like to experience. Then, while breathing in imagine that you are breathing in the emotion you’d like to experience and, while breathing out, expel the one you’d like to eliminate. For instance, let’s say you’d like to experience confidence, and eliminate fear. Sit up straight. Take a deep breath in and as you do, imagine that you are breathing in confidence. Allow the breath to carry confidence to all your cells, hold it for a count of three, and then breathe out and imagine you are breathing out fear. Make your own emotion choices and do three sets of this breathing exercise.
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