One fall morning eight years ago, I woke up in a pool of sweat. It felt like the walls were closing in on me. I was completely paralyzed with fear and unable to move. My thoughts had gotten the better of me. In reality, everything was okay. Not exactly the way I would have liked it to be, but nothing earth shattering that I couldn’t handle. I had a panic/anxiety attack. They are a lot more common than you might think, but at the moment you are experiencing one, it feels like cardiac arrest. Not fun.

Looking back, there were a number of incidents that had taken place, which I had chosen to sweep under the carpet, that led up to this event. However, this was something I could not ignore. I was determined to make sure it never happened again and believe me I tried everything. I changed my diet. I got off caffeine. I sought out cognitive therapy to straighten out my thoughts. I even exercised more than I already did. They all helped to some extent, but nothing helped more than learning how to breath properly. It sounds ridiculous—I had been breathing for 35 years at the time, so you would think I’d be pretty good at it by then, but that wasn’t the case at all.

I did a bunch of research and it turns out that most of us are “vertical” breathers, meaning that our shoulders move upward when we inhale. We breathe from our upper chest, where our lungs have minimal presence. The correct way to breathe is horizontally from the diaphragm which is located in the middle of the body. The belly needs to expand while we inhale through our nose and then we need to squeeze our bellies inward during the exhale.

Whenever I get stressed and my mind begins to fill up with thoughts of doom and gloom, here is what I do:

I inhale deeply through my nose until my stomach is completely full, which takes about 7 to 10 seconds. I hold that in for 5 to 10 seconds and then exhale all that built up air pressure through my mouth. Then I repeat this process as long as I need to. (I’ve been known to do it for as long as 5 to 10 minutes at a time.) I can promise you that it works. When I am done, I have usually forgotten what I was so fearful about in the first place.