5 ways breathwork can enhance your summer holidays
Summer can be an intense, hectic, joyful time. Enter breathwork to help you ride the ups and downs of summertime and come out the other side in one piece, even with unpredictable kids in tow for the entire time.
The onset of summer brings mixed feelings for most of us. Better weather - yay. Longer days - yay. Festivals and fun things happening - yay. Heading off on a summer holiday - yay. But it’s also normal to feel a bit nervous or even a sense of dread about this full-on time of the year. Juggling work and reduced childcare - meh. Finding ways to fill long days - meh. Travelling with small kids - arghhhh. Heatwaves - omg.
Whatever your feelings are about summer, I’m sure you appreciate both the good and the slightly more challenging parts of this time of year. No matter if you’re heading away on a summer holidays, having a staycation at home or juggling work with reduced childcare for 6-8 weeks then I have some tips to use to help you enhance the summer holidays. All using breathwork!
The inspiration for this blog post comes from real life. We recently got back from a week in Mallorca with my side of the family. We rented a house between 11 of us (8 adults and 3 kids) and enjoyed lots of beach time, pool time and Spanish food. Fantastic! But, as I’m sure you know, travelling with kids always has its challenges. Some say “vacation = parenting in another location”. Quite true.
Throughout the holiday, I used breathwork techniques and applied tools and knowledge picked up on my journey with breathwork in various ways to bring more enjoyment, more presence, more peace and more calm to the experience.
And now we’re on the verge of the summer break, where I’ll be working around severely reduced childcare and having a week staycation, I know I’ll be relying on these techniques and tools throughout. Read on as I share the top 5 ways to use breathwork to manage the stress and boost the good times this summer.
1. Use breathwork to navigate tantrums
I’m sure you’ve realised this by now but any new experiences or shaking up of the routine can have a big impact on kids, especially highly sensitive ones and tantrums may increase as a result.
This has certainly been the case for us in the past, but on our recent trip for some reason we only had one big tantrum and a handful of little ones. However, I was glad to have breathwork on hand to help me hold space for my daughter and get out the other side.
Try these breathwork techniques when tantrums hit:
Use breathwork, particularly down-regulating techniques to help you regulate yourself (activating the “rest and digest” parasympathetic branch of the nervous system) and invite more calm and groundedness as you breathe through tantrums and show up as the parent you want to be.
This can really be the missing piece to dealing with tantrums - actually having the capacity to hold space for them and navigate big emotions for you and your kid without being overcome with a desire to just shut the tantrum down.
Some breathwork techniques for breathing through tantrums:
Belly breathing: breathing in and out through the nose, sending your breath low into your body: you should feel your lower belly rise and fall and lower ribs expand and contract. Keep the breath slow and steady. Try to keep breathing like this throughout the tantrum whenever you become aware of your breath.
Extended exhales: inhale through the nose for a count of 4, feeling your lower belly rise and lower ribs expand. Exhale for a count of 8 (or longer) through pursed lips as if blowing into a straw, gently releasing the air as you do so. Repeat as many times as you like. Variation: humming or shushing on the exhale.
Physiological sigh: one long inhale through the nose, top it up with a short inhale through the nose then exhale with a sigh. Keep the breath low in the body. Repeat a few times. Follow along to this technique here.
2. Play breathwork games with your kids
Breathwork can be for all ages! Well, certain techniques can be anyway. Kids as young as 2 or 3 can start to grasp a concept of playing with their breath (read about my personal story with this here) and it can be such a beautiful and fun tool to teach them and equip them with for life.
On holiday, we had a beautiful moment with all three kids (my 4-year-old and 1-year-old and their 2-year-old cousin) as we took turns leading breathwork practices on the trampoline. Heartwarming!
Try playing these breathwork games with kids:
Get them to make up a breathwork technique based on animals (e.g. “let’s breathe like an elephant”)
Make silly faces and noises on the exhale
Link movements with the breath – think big, silly, exaggerated movements with limbs etc that sync to the inhale and exhale
Let them freestyle (they are so creative I promise they’ll have ideas)
Play “guess how I’m feeling” by how you’re breathing (for older kids)
3. Use felt-sense awareness to cultivate more presence
One of the foundations of breathwork is using the breath a portal to cultivating your felt sense awareness, aka your full-body listening. This is one of the first things I invite my clients to do in a breathwork session as it’s an entry point to deeper connection within. In short: you can use the breath as an anchor to switch your awareness from what is going on in your mind and outside of you to what is happening in terms of sensations and emotions in your body.
Cultivating your felt sense awareness is a mindfulness practice that – over time – can nurture your ability to be present with what is actually happening around you and within you at any given moment. After some time, it just becomes a habit to regularly check in with how you are feeling about things (using all your senses) as you go about your day and life.
How to do a felt-sense body scan to be more present in the moment:
When experiencing something amazing or awe-inspiring this summer, take a moment to slow down your breath and do a felt sense body scan. Move up or down the body, noticing sensations and emotions as you go. Really anchor in with all your senses and amplify any pleasurable emotions and sensations with breath. Be really there and really let yourself feel it! I did this while swimming in the med, for example, as that’s such a dream experience for me I wanted to be fully in it.
4. Use breathwork to help with nerves while flying
Okay, confession time: I used to be a nervous flyer. I only got over it when sitting next to a woman on a transatlantic flight who was more scared than me. It put things into perspective pretty quickly.
That being said, I am still not not nervous, especially now I’m basically always flying with my two precious wee ones. Example: on our flight home from Mallorca, we experienced turbulence and I remembered how scary it feels. In one instant my body went into fight and flight mode: sweaty palms, heart racing, breath shortening etc.
Enter breathwork to shift my state. After all: “change how you breathe, change how you feel”. I started to consciously slow down my exhale (a go-to for moments of anxiety or panic). Within a few moments, I felt less nervous and my racing, irrational thoughts were subsiding.
How to use breathwork to calm flying nerves:
Try extending your exhales, using the practice described in point 1. If this feels challenging, just keep inhale and exhale steady, counting in for 5 and out for 5, breathing low into body and relaxing your shoulder and jaw and anywhere else tense on the exhale. Create a sense of calm and safety in the body to bring a sense of calm and safety to the mind too. Use this one when flying or doing anything anxiety-inducing this summer.
5. Use breathwork to get your non-negotiable me time each day
Spending intense time with your family and friends during the summer break or while on holiday is fab. It can also feel like a lot, especially it you like your alone time. I need to recharge in my own energy several times a day to be able to cope with being in others’ energy for extended periods of time. Any other projectors (from the Human Design system) out there!?
On our last holiday, this looked like doing breathwork and yoga nidra daily in a quiet spot in the garden or my bedroom for 5-15 mins once or twice a day. I often used my 1-year-old’s nap time for this or did it if I woke up before everyone else.
And during the 5 weeks of summer break we have here, with very little childcare but the same work commitments as the rest of the year, I will make sure I carve out that time every single day if it’s the last thing I do. I tend to give our 4-year-old screen time during the little one’s nap so I can do such practices that give me so much and, let’s face it, help me get through the day.
How to use breathwork to recharge:
While you can always simply belly breathe or do some extended exhales, many people find it easier to really disconnect from the external world and the chatter in the mind if they follow an audio. Good news! You can now access 6 of my go-to tracks for moments like these in my free download The Everyday Breathwork Bundle. Enjoy!
