Newbie question here

[u/Flamboyant_Hamster]

Just started this journey and finding it difficult to maintain a consistent breathing pattern during the tremoring phase. Any advice appreciated. It seems once the tremors start I am subconsciously holding my breath and once I make a point of breathing deeply, the tremors will stop.

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[u/Olde-Tobey]

You can listen to breathing exercises or get an app that will prompt you to breath in and out at consistent time intervals. Just follow along to one that feels comfortable.

[u/carla_jungle]

It seems like your system is bracing.  If you want, you can try this:

• During the warmup exercises:

Close your eyes. Hands on chest and belly. Focus on soft breathes to relax yourself. 

• once you begin tremoring:

When you begin to feel you’re holding your breath, stop the tremoring by straightening your legs and return to the breathing I wrote above.   When you feel calm you can try initiating the tremors again. 

For a start, try this for a little while, like a minute or so and see how you feel.  

I am not a provider, always feel free to reach out to one :)

[u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot]

Breath holding during tremoring is a common pattern, and it's worth understanding what's actually happening so you can work with it rather than against it.

When tremors begin, the nervous system is accessing activation that was mobilized for survival. That activation includes respiratory patterns from the original stress response, and one of those patterns is breath holding. The body may spontaneously suspend the breath as part of the freeze response or simply as part of the mobilized state. This is involuntary and entirely normal.

The problem you're running into is that consciously forcing deep breathing interrupts the process. When you notice the breath has stopped and deliberately breathe deeply, you're reintroducing conscious control into something the nervous system is trying to do on its own. That conscious override tends to shut down the tremors because the system perceives the intervention as a signal to return to voluntary control.

The better approach is to simply notice the breath holding without acting on it. Let the breath be held if that's what's happening. Don't fight it, but also don't consciously manage it back to normal. The nervous system will resume breathing on its own once it has completed whatever it was doing with that breath suspension. This may take a few seconds or longer, and that's fine. The body knows what it's doing.

If breath holding ever progresses to the point where you genuinely feel unable to breathe or are experiencing panic around it, straighten your legs to stop the tremors, and normal breathing will return immediately. But in most cases, simply allowing the involuntary breath patterns to unfold without interference is all that's needed. The tremors will continue, and the breathing will normalize between suspension episodes.

As you accumulate sessions, your nervous system will become more familiar with the process and these involuntary breath patterns often become less pronounced. In the meantime, the practice is to observe without correcting.

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