In times of intense stress and anxiety, you need instant relief. Breathe In Calm offers powerful neuroscience-based strategies grounded in mindfulness and yogic breathing to help you find the peace you deserve.

Anxiety affects all aspects of life—including career, family, and relationships. And if you have anxiety, you may feel helpless against your symptoms, and a victim to their impact. But nothing could be further from the truth. You are stronger than your anxiety, and you have all the resources you need to manage it. You just need to learn how to use them. This practical guide will empower you to take charge of your anxiety, so you can take charge of your life.

In Breathe in Calm, a neuroscientist and yoga expert offers powerful tips to help you identify when anxiety is rising, so you can stop feeling helpless and start being proactive. You’ll find calming tools—including yogic breathing, mindfulness, and acceptance—to actively soothe your nervous system and regulate your physical and emotional state. You’ll also learn ways to stay calm in the moment, develop confidence, and courageously move forward in pursuing the life you desire.

This anti-anxiety tool kit includes:

  • Yogic breathing practices and easy postures to soothe the body and mind
  • Mindfulness and acceptance tools to help you stay grounded and focused on what matters
  • Tools to help you gain awareness of the habits driving your anxiety
  • Kindness and compassion tools for self-care
  • Tons of downloadable guided meditations and songs

Anxiety doesn’t have to run your life. If you’re ready to breathe in calm, and breathe out stress, worry, and anxiety—this book will show you how to get started right away.

Endorsements

“A wise, kind, and beautiful offering. This book provides practical, user-friendly methods to live better with anxiety for a lifetime.”
—Bob Stahl, PhD, coauthor of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

“Breathe in Calm is a lifesaver for anyone that has ever experienced anxiety. The simple yet powerful tools and practices are explained in a clear, practical, and easy to follow manner. The book reflects Domonick Wegesin’s years of experience helping people navigate anxiety through his deep mastery of science, yoga, and mindfulness.”
—Ashley Sharp, long-time yoga and meditation teacher, author of Mindfulness for Beginners, and founder of Refuge at Pudding Creek—a retreat center in Northern California

“Breathe in Calm is a breath of fresh air for anyone who experiences anxiety on any level, which means all of us. Wegesin’s evidence-based approach is both accessible and affirming. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience, with potent sharing of various students/clients who have successfully integrated these practices into their lives, this guide is as ground-breaking as it is grounding. Equal parts wisdom and wit, this book is bound to change your life.”
— Ken Breniman, LCSW, somatic psychotherapist, certified yoga therapist, Thanatologist, Psychedelic & Plant Medicine Integration Specialist.
 
“I suppose that many of us have a toolbox around the house, holding all the various tools needed for basic repairs: hammer, screwdrivers, wrenches, and the like. Each of these tools, of course, is designed for a specific purpose, and while each may be used for things other than that purpose,  each works best when applied as intended. 
 
Domonick Wegesin’s breathe in calm: yogic breathing & mindfulness tools for instant anxiety relief, is a book much like our toolbox. In fact, he calls the eight, multi-faceted self-help techniques included the book “tools,” to be applied in those times when our emotional lives are in need of “repair.” Domonick has all the qualifications needed to stock this book with the necessary tools. A former professor of neuropsychology in Columbia University’s department of neurology, and having studied mindfulness-based stress reduction with senior teachers at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center he now teaches anxiety-reduction yoga classes and workshops in California.
 
We might think of each of the eight tools as a kind of Swiss Army knife. The one I own, in addition to two knife blades, has a scissors, bottle cap opener, corkscrew, and a toothpick. Each of Domonick’s eight tools has its own section, headed Observer, Breathing, Grounding, Acceptance, Choice, Choose your story, Kindness, and Understanding Rest and Digest. The arrangement is quite logical, each section after the first building on its predecessor, and each section, in turn, further divided into between four and seven chapters, 41 in all. 
 
Domonick includes a range of practices under the main tools, no doubt recognizing, as did the yogis of old, that not every practice will suit every individual. These practices include but aren’t limited to meditation and self-awareness, body scanning, self-massage, journaling, and of course one of the very oldest self-transformational practices, breathing.
 
Considering Domonick’s impressive academic accomplishments, we might be a bit hesitant to pick this book up, imagining its writing to be peppered with the kind of “where’s-my-dictionary”  jargon typical of academics. We’d be completely wrong. He does cite the results of scientific studies to support his positions, but they’re framed in ways even I could understand and tempered with anecdotes of average folks Domonick has worked with as well as revealing stories of Domonick’s own life experiences. It’s also significant that although the sub-title “yogic” tools, there are hardly any Sanskrit terms, which naturally makes the writing accessible to a very broad audience, yoga practitioners and average folks alike.
 
There are two things about this book that, for me as a yoga teacher going on 35 years, I found especially striking. I’m not a consumer of self-help books so I don’t know exactly how unique this is, but the entire edifice of this program is based on establishing what Domonick calls the “observer,” what the old yogis knew as the “witness” (sakshin). One lesson I learned from one of my teachers is that before we try to change anything about ourselves, we first need to understand the “what is,” and for that we need the perspective of the non-judgmental witness, or observer, to answer this question in the immediate, objective sense: Who am I? As soon as I saw this to be the first tool, I knew this would be a book worth reading.
 
The second thing is a rather minor point, something that may slip by unnoticed if not reading with attention. In one of his breathing exercises, Domonick mentions the usefulness of breathing into the back torso, because it’s here where we find the bulk of the lungs. I am a consumer of yoga breathing manuals, and this simple but profound comment is both unique and enormously useful, this I’m sure of.
 
One of the typical problems with books of this genre is that the written word, no matter how well written, doesn’t provide the same quality of guidance as a live teacher. Domonick solves this problem by including nine recorded teachings on a website referenced in the introduction. All but one are between about three and 12 minutes, and include three meditations, three breathing exercises, a body scan, and a self-massage. The last one, a self compassion meditation, takes us on a nearly 23 minute journey. There are also worksheets and handouts available on the site.
 
After all the foregoing, it won’t come as a surprise if I say this book presents a highly intelligent, deeply insightful, and unfailingly compassionate program that can, if applied consistently over time with attention–as is the case with any self-transformative practice–have extremely positive and powerful life-changing effects.” 
 
—Richard Rosen teaches yoga in Oakland, California. His latest book, Yoga by the Numbers: The Sacred & Symbolic in Yoga Philosophy & Practice, will be published by Shambhala in the Spring, 2022

Testimonials

The “Breathe in Calm” techniques I learned from Domonick really work for me. For some reason I wake up every morning with anxiety. Luckily I learned mindful breathing techniques from Domonick and use them EVERY MORNING when I wake up. Instant calming and so beneficial.
I’m not great at meditating but find I can do these techniques easily.  If it works for me, it can work for you. 
Sherry McKenna

Practicing mindfulness with Domonick has led to new insights in my life. For one, I realize that I’m OK. Unpleasant things may happen, but I’m still the same OK person I am as when pleasant things happen. I feel like I am coming out of my shell and feeling the sun on my face for what feels like the first time. It is a good feeling. I am profoundly grateful for Domonick’s teachings and guidance.
Kim Z.

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Breathe in Calm Workshops

To help you put the book to good use, I will be hosting a Breathe in Calm Workshop, in which we’ll come together to explore the mindfulness and breathing practices in the book.  The dates for the next workshop TBA.  You can email me to be notified of upcoming workshops.