Power of Oxygen 3

Podcast Version
​(With NotebookLM)

Breathing Techniques for Business Executives’ Stress Relief and Focus

The Breath-Mind-Body Connection in Business and Health
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In the high-stakes world of business, executives can learn a lot about how first responders deal with stress. The post-covid VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) has even increased the burden. According to the Health and Safety Executive, in the UK alone, approximately 900,000 workers reported work-related poor health due to stress, depression and anxiety in 2022-2023 alone. Akin to the synergy between a successful business strategy and its execution, a helpful philosophy for stress relief lies in the mind-body connection and uses breathing techniques. Both aim to manage and optimize performance and well-being.

General Benefits and Business Applications:

Breathing techniques offer a plethora of benefits that parallel the needs of a thriving corporate environment. Regular, controlled breathing exercises can:

• Activate a relaxation response that may effectively reduce stress and anxiety in the workplace.
• Enhance emotional regulation and concentration, enabling better decision-making in high-stress situations and sharper focus on business tasks.
• Contribute significantly to physical well-being and mental resilience.
• Promote better sleep quality, ensuring clarity of mind and rejuvenation of the body.
• Boost energy levels, crucial for endurance in the fast-paced business world, and aids in pain management.

​Key Philosophical Concepts and Business Correlations:
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1. Mind-Body Connection: Controlled breathing influences the autonomic nervous system, like a strong leadership impact throughout the organization.
2. Presence and Mindfulness: Focused breathing brings us into the present moment, similar to a focus on day-to-day operational excellence in business.
3. Regulation of the Nervous System: Controlled breathing shifts the body from stress to relaxation mode, mirroring a business's transition from crisis to continuous improvement.
4. Energy and Balance: Proper breathing balances energy, much like effective business management balances the strengths of different departments into a strong company.

Effective Breathing Techniques for Executives:

1. Diaphragmatic Breathing: Building a Resilient Business Foundation - Like building a strong foundation for a business, deep diaphragmatic breathing enhances lung capacity and promotes relaxation. It strengthens your core, reduces back and neck issues, while increasing blood flow and oxygen delivery to your body.​
2. 2Box Breathing: Strategic Planning for Stressful Situations - This technique is used by Navy Seals, and involves equal parts (4-4-4-4) of inhaling, holding, exhaling, and holding again. It can be practiced in preparation for, or during, stressful business situations, helping to maintain composure and clarity. Try the boxbreathing with this app
3. Progressive Muscle Relaxation with Breath: Releasing Business Tension -Consciously tensing and relaxing muscle groups, while breathing deeply, helps systematically address and resolve stresses in your body. Similar to Lean concept of lowering the water level, tensing your muscles might identify key issues in your body, which you can consciously relax to resolve.
4. Mindfulness Breathing: Centering for Enhanced Business Focus - Focusing solely on the breath brings the mind to the present, reducing reactionary responses and improving focus, like a strategic offsite in business to assess realign with its core objectives.

Integration into a Busy Executive Schedule:

Incorporating breathing techniques into the fabric of daily life involves a few key strategies. Coach Thomas Hague recommends incorporating regular short breathing sessions during the day. Five times, two and a half minutes each, to dramatically reduce stress. This can be done at anytime and anywhere, even during meeting breaks. It might even be a group activity, to foster a balanced and healthy corporate culture and improve the group’s emotional intelligence and resistance to stress.

Additionally, we recommend taking five to ten minutes before bedtime to breathe purposefully. This will improve your sleep and allow you to awaken fully refreshed for the new business day and its challenges. 

Don’t forget: It is the small, daily consistent steps that turn into positive patterns, habits and beliefs ingrained in body and mind. Enjoy the Journey!

BONUS TIP from Coach Glenn:
Track your heartbeat for more self-awareness and stress relief.

As a variant of the muscles tension and relaxation exercise (#3 above), once you are able to listen to your heartbeat and align your breathing with it, you can try to deeply focus and track the pumping sensation through your body. This does require a healthy, strong heartbeat and an advanced focus overall.
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I usually track it from my chest, to the top of my head, and then down my neck and back, to the back of my legs and toes, then back up the front of the legs and abdomen to my fingertips. Once you achieved that level of focus, you can target the sensation in a specific troubling muscle group and focus on the pumping blood through the muscle, calmly inhaling and exhaling, to relax the muscle.

Oxygen Series:

• The Power of Oxygen(24/1/2024)
• Optimal Breathing (31/1/2024)
• Stress Relief and Focus (9/2/2024)
• Rhythmic Breathing Patterns (14/2/2024)
• Hypoxic training, benefits and techniques  (21/2/2024)
• Conclusion: Executive wellbeing  (28/2/2024)