Mental health and wellbeing column: breathing exercises

What are you doing now? Is your breathing helping you? We all need air to survive. Proper breathing, however, is often neglected, or not seen as anything more than a necessary function of life. In our busy, often complex professional lives, breathing can be significant for our personal wellbeing, and also the quality of playing and teaching. Breathing exercises can be a useful ally in engaging with your audiences, pupils and peers.

Teaching and performing involves a huge range of activities with associated pressures to deliver. Freelancers multi-task in a whole range of settings, and all teachers prepare weekly reports, answer emails from senior leaders, and plan termly diaries, budgets and resources. Are you feeling that familiar sense of panic as the extent of your workload spans to the distant horizon?