Overview

This is an exercise that you can practice while you are sitting at your desk and just need a little restoration break. It is designed to relax and relieve stress. Review the steps and then take the next five minutes to practice them.

1. Sit up in your chair with your feet flat on the floor. If you are wearing leather shoes or heels, you should remove them.
2. Place your hands on your diaphragm, which is located just beneath your rib cage. This is the space from which you should be breathing.
3. Too many of us breathe with our shoulders. Your shoulders should not move when you breathe.
4. Feel the rib cage and diaphragm expand as you take a deep breath. Remember, your shoulders should not move.
5. Practice a couple more times until you are sure to breathe correctly.
6. Now with your feet flat on the ground, take a deep breath, pulling it up from the ground through your feet, up to the crown of your head. Exhale all the way back down through your feet and back into the ground.
7. Repeat these steps a few times.

As you take these steps, you might feel a tingle in your feet and that is completely normal. You are opening the energy channels in your body and restoring oxygen to your typically oxygen-deprived cells.