Presented by

Dr. Valerie Jeremijenko

Overview

The way we breathe can be a major contributor to our overall health and wellness and a primary tool in controlling stress and anxiety. Breath can also help us increase our energy, improve our cognitive skills and enhance our mental balance. Yet, many of us are breathing incorrectly, with no awareness of what our predominate breathing habits are. As a long time student affairs professional and yoga teacher, I see the poor breathing habits of Education City students and the resulting stress, anxiety and even panic attacks this contributes to. While a comprehensive breathing, yoga and mindfulness program would serve our students best, most of our students do not make time for it and so VCUQatar has been developing occasional breathing workshops and “breathing breaks” for the students that we think are most in need.

In Breathing Breaks: Working with Breath to help Minimize Student Stress, we will identify common forms of problematic breathing and identify which breathing patterns work best for which situation. We will explore what societal forces may have caused changes in our natural breathing habits, identify our own habitual breathing technique, and explore techniques for identifying the breathing habits of others. With this as a baseline, we will explore exercises for changing our own breathing habits and introducing different forms of breathing to our students. Finally, we will discuss different formats for sharing this information and these tools with our student population.

Target Audience

Doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, allied healthcare professionals, students, educators, counselors and administrators.

Objectives

1. Identify the different forms of breathing and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
2. Outline various techniques that healthcare practitioners may use to support students to change breathing habits. 
3. Practice micro breathing workshops with students, clients and/or peers.

Workshop Outline

References

Dr. Belisa Vranich: Breath: The Simple Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve your Mental and Physical Health

Patrick McKeown: The Oxygen Advantage, Close Your Mouth, Asthma Free Naturally, Anxiety Free: Stop Worrying and Quieten Your Mind, Sleep with Buteyko.