Box breathing and Anxiety reduction for clients

 Do you get nervous when you get tattooed? Me too. It’s totally normal to feel some anxiety before your body mods. It’s a permanent change in appearance and it can be painful. So how can you best minimize that anxiety? Staying calm isn’t always easy but here are a few ways you can help chill out during your session. 

Box Breathing

Picture a square box in your mind. What you will want to do is to mentally follow the lines of that square. As you move through inhaling, holding, exhaling and holding along those 4 lines try and stay focused only on those. It helps regulate your breathing pattern and can reduce anxiety by giving you mindfulness.  

1: INHALE - inhale through your nose to the count of 4. 

2: HOLD - Hold your breath for a count of 4.

3: EXHALE - Exhale slowly in a controlled manner for the count of 4

4: HOLD - Hold again for a count of 4. 

REPEAT. 

You can also do a similar technique with a 4 second inhale, a 7 second pause and an 8 second exhale. The key is focusing on the repetition and breathing. 

Belly Breathing

Belly breathing, like box breathing uses your breath as a focus so that you can distract yourself from what’s going on. Breathing from your diaphragm and expanding your abdomen as you inhale then contracting as you exhale allows for deeper breaths and more oxygen to enter your lungs. The results are similar to box breathing and you don’t have to count. 

Herbal Tea and essential oils

While your doctor can give you anti anxiety medications in extreme situations many herbal supplements can be used to help you feel calm. These are not medial cures, and I am not a doctor, but all medicine started from herbs and I do believe there’s some benefit to them. 

Valerian, Lavender, Chamomile and St John’s Wort, Passionflower, and Lemon Balm are all touted as having relaxation effects. Whether you’re looking for essential oils or tea look for organic, pesticide free, and as natural form as you can for best quality. Generally, I don’t recommend the oils as people can be really sensitive to them. When I’m sitting next to a client whatever perfume you’re wearing can be suffocating and essential oils can be really bad for that. Tea is a much better choice in that situation. 

Distraction

Sometimes the best medicine is simply to distract yourself. Refocusing your brain elsewhere isn’t necessarily the easiest when you’re in pain and many people find trying to focus on a movie or show irritating when getting tattooed. Music can be a good way to give you an alternative focus without needing too much brainpower. Everyone’s taste in music is different so using calming and zen sounds might not be for you. If it’s loud screams rock that works to relax you then that’s great! Make sure you bring some headphones and rock out. 

Fidget Toys

Yes, these can be annoying. For the love of peace please don’t bring something like a clicky pen. Constant clicking isn’t fun for some of us. But a toy that you can pop or repetitively play with can help give your mind something else to focus on. Slime, pop boards, a spinner, whatever helps your brain work - well that works for me. Please keep in mind your artist is working. Lights and flashing stuff can be really distracting especially if it’s close, so whatever you bring to play with just okay it with your artist and make sure that it’s not going to be distracting to them. 

Skip the Caffeine

Caffeine can heighten anxiety so energy drinks, sodas and coffee can all increase your nerves. Skip those before the appointment and make sure that you eat. Caffeine is a stimulant and for neurotypical people it can make it harder to sit still. If you’re concerned about anxiety then this is not something you should skip on. 

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