If despite all of the joy and love flowing all around you right now during this festive period, you find yourself needing a slight lift, the following 4 steps will give you the equivalent of a jaeger bomb of that feel good feeling! 🙂

1.  Deepen your breath, ensuring that your inhalation is of equal length to your exhalation for around 20 seconds, some people find working to a count of 5 effective.

2.  Place your hand on your heart and imagine your breath is entering and exiting directly from your heart – do this for another 20 seconds.

3.  Start to think about someone or something that makes you smile for about a minute.

4.  Realize that you feel a bit better than before you started this exercise 🙂

And that’s it – easy as that.  This technique is one of many simple, but powerful breathing exercises from the scientists at the Heart Math Institute.  It’s perfect for those times when you’re feeling anxious, frustrated or have any negative emotions that you want to shake off quickly.  A Christmas present for life, from me to you.  Enjoy.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shawnzlea/