‫If you're going to relax during your exam, the first thing you need to know is: how do I relax in general?
‫What does it mean to be relaxed?
‫How do I know when I'm relaxed?
‫So one way of knowing that you're relaxed is: what's your breathing doing?
‫You don't have to focus on your breathing if you don't want to, but just notice when you're relaxed,
‫your outbreaths, your exhales, are longer than your inhales.
‫When you're starting to fall asleep at night, you'll notice that your exhales are longer than your inhales.
‫And when you wake up in the morning, your body is trying to wake itself up
‫so you'll notice that your inhales are longer than your exhales, generally speaking.
‫So if you're nervous and you need to communicate to your body: hey!
‫I know there's a big test, but actually it's not a tiger you're not going to need to run.
‫So you can relax.
‫You can send oxygen to the brain instead of the legs, because I promise there is no tiger.
‫How do you do that? you just make sure that your out-breaths are longer than your in-breaths.
‫You don't have to count.
‫You don't have to focus on your breath if you don't like that.
‫But you just every now and then go.... [long exhale]
‫Or something shorter than that
‫And you'll notice that you're starting to calm down.
‫Some people don't like focusing on their breath.
‫Some people love it, if you love it, do that.
‫It's wonderful.
‫If you hate it, just do that. [the long exhale]
‫Just do this every now and then. [a long exhale]
‫To make sure that you're breathing out and you're telling your body: it's OK, there's no tigers, you
‫can share out the oxygen, you can give a little bit to my brain.
‫I promise I'm not going to have to run.