{"id":2328,"date":"2010-08-19T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-19T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2010\/08\/therapy-thursday-count-to-four.html"},"modified":"2010-08-19T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T10:00:00","slug":"therapy-thursday-count-to-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2010\/08\/therapy-thursday-count-to-four.html","title":{"rendered":"Therapy Thursday: Count to Four"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"pocket therapist front cover small.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/71\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"258\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/span><em>I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pocket-Therapist-Emotional-Survival-Kit\/dp\/1599952998\">The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.<\/a>&#8221; <\/em><br \/>\nThe first one, ironically, helped me enormously last week during a very intense interview for a full time consulting job.<br \/>\n<strong>Count to Four<\/strong><br \/>\nBreathing is the foundation of sanity because it is the way we provide our brain and every other vital organ in our body with the oxygen needed to survive. Breathing also eliminates toxins from our systems.<br \/>\nThere are hundreds of techniques for deep breathing, but one of the simplest and most effectives ones that I learned in the psych ward is the &#8220;Four Step&#8221; method:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Breathe in slowly to a count of four.?<\/li>\n<li>Hold the breath for a count of four.?<\/li>\n<li>Exhale slowly through pursed lips to a count of four.?<\/li>\n<li>Rest for a count of four (without taking any breaths).?<\/li>\n<li>Take two normal breaths.?<\/li>\n<li>Start over again with number one.<\/li>\n<li>If you get real ambitious, try this: Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth. Breathe in slowly through your nose as you count to five. Hold your breath as you count to seven. Then exhale slowly as you count to eight. Put your hands on your abdomen so that you can feel it rise as you inhale.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i>*&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beyondblue1\">Click here to <b>subscribe to Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thereseborchard\">click here to follow Therese on <b>Twitter<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/beyond_blue\">click here to join <b>Group Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a>, a depression support group. Now stop clicking.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, &#8220;The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Therapy Thursday: Count to Four - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2010\/08\/therapy-thursday-count-to-four.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Therapy Thursday: Count to Four - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. 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Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression &amp; Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}