What is anxiety? Fritz Perls, developer of Gestalt Therapy, used to tell his clients that:

“Anxiety is excitement without breathing.”

What a practical definition! The more constricted the breath – the more anxiety.
Something exciting is happening and you need to breathe.

What’s a situation where you are experiencing some anxiety? Where even just thinking about it triggers anxiety? Rather than suffer through or avoid the situation, try breathing.

Here’s the practice:

• Bring the situation/conversation to mind.
• And breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe.
• Keep holding the situation in mind and enjoy breathing.

How does that change your experience?

Where’s the anxiety, now?

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3. Strengthening Integrity: A 10 second tutorial
4. Why Talking Too Much Undermines Goal Setting