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By James D. Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, CFT
WellMed Chief Compassion Officer
Have you ever gotten so overwhelmed and stressed out that you realize you’re forgetting to breathe? This is a natural response to stress, but when we allow our breathing to become shallow, we’re laying out a welcome mat for panic and anxiety to come right on in. Anyone who has experienced panic attacks or anxiety knows how debilitating they can be.
Acute stress triggers the body’s fight, flight, or freeze response which can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and depression. Fortunately, there are tried and true preventive methods we can use to address stress, anxiety, and panic.
I have personally found success with integrative medicine expert Dr. Andrew Weil’s 4-7-8 breathing
exercise:
» 4 — Breathe in deeply through your nose for 4 seconds
» 7 — Hold it if you can for 7 seconds
» 8 — Exhale from your mouth with energy for 8 seconds
Repeat anywhere from three to five times. Do this whenever you feel stress.
Dr. Weil, who teaches this breathing exercise, calls it a “natural tranquilizer for the nervous system. I can affirm that it helps put me in a relaxed state, and helps me to be more focused.
To see a video of Dr. Weil demonstrating the breathing exercise, go to YouTube and search for “Dr. Weil 4 7 8” or visit drweil.com.
Structured breathing is a healthy, proven way to help us better manage stress during these uncertain times. If we actively manage our stress, we will be better prepared for what is in front of us today and we’ll be able to respond and not react to whatever challenges or opportunities come tomorrow. I encourage you to take time every day to breathe consciously using the 4-7-8 technique and share this stress-busting tool with your loved ones.
James D. (Dr. Jamie) Huysman, PsyD, LCSW, CFT, Chief Compassion Officer, Project Omega. Social entrepreneurship, advocacy, and innovation have been the touchstones and driving force throughout Dr. Jamie’s 40-year career encompassing both for-profit and nonprofit leadership roles. In the 1980s he undertook the advocacy, outreach, and clinical programming for addiction and dual diagnosis treatment facilities and developed his long standing private practice. The next decade found him serving as the clinical innovator for the major Talk, Court, and Reality television shows of the day. Seeing the need to advocate for guest’s rights, he designed and developed TV AfterCare®, the first national program dedicated to the clinical and corrective follow-up support for guests of the talk/court and reality genre, which remains active today. Dr. Jamie had hundreds of television and radio appearances and cohosted Walgreen’s Health Corner with media personalities Leeza Gibbons and subsequently Joan Lunden. In 2002, while working on her show, he partnered with Ms. Gibbons, co-founding and creating the programming for The Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation, a formal network of national locations, providing direct services to family caregivers around the US. There he administratively and clinically supervised a trained staff dedicated to supporting the family caregivers of loved ones with memory disorders. Together with Rosemary DeAngelis Laird, MD, he and Gibbons co-wrote the bestselling Take Your Oxygen First: Protecting Your Health and Happiness While Caring for a Loved One with Memory Loss. It was during this time that “Dr. Jamie” became certified as a Compassion Fatigue Therapist and became a much sought-after keynote speaker and session presenter at numerous caregiving, senior, and aging conferences all over North America. He left the LGMF in 2010 and went to work for WellMed Medical Management as Vice President of Provider Relations and Government Affairs. Now, as newly appointed Chief Compassion Officer, he brings his special brand of connective magic to the Patient Teleconnection platform. Through this new national outreach effort and in behalf of the WellMed Charitable Foundation he continues his advocacy efforts to educate empower and energize medical patients within all healthcare systems today as well as the general public nationwide.