Calm down. The dreaded two words that any anxiety sufferer hates to hear. Relax, will you. Three more. The problem with saying you have a problem with anxiety is that everybody, to an extent, has a problem with anxiety. It is a word tossed around glibly a trillion times a day the world over. I hope the traffic isn't bad ... What if I lose my job? ... Did I remember to turn the oven off? We all worry about things. That is a given. But anxiety, real anxiety, aka the kind that doctors call clinical anxiety or generalised anxiety disorder, is a whole other headache.

Let's step inside the mind of someone who suffers. This stomach ache I have had since yesterday must be the first sign of stomach cancer ... I don't want to go out today, I've got a bad feeling that I'll get run over or something ... What if he/she dies tomorrow, how will I go on living?

The mind you have just been inside is mine. I am an anxiety sufferer. The medical variety. Trying to explain what it feels like has always been next to impossible. Those around me, loved ones, friends, casual acquaintances, still revert to the vocabulary of the bemused: Calm down. Relax, will you. Chill out. Take a deep breath.

The last on that list no longer bothers me. Having practised yoga for two and a half years, I am in the process of learning that breathing, an activity I used to view as something that got in the way of smoking, is actually anxiety's worst nightmare. It is a natural antidote, an airy counterpoise. No wonder psychologists and doctors used to tell me to carry a brown paper bag with me so that whenever I had a panic attack, I could pull it out like an oxygen mask on a crashing plane and breathe in and out of it. The rush of carbon dioxide apparently neuters the hyper-ventilation that accompanies a panic attack.

So I breathe differently now. Yoga has taught me to breathe deeply from my diaphragm. I didn't realise that it was possible to breathe badly, the way you can be bad at tennis or chemistry. But it is. I discovered that I subsisted on shallow breath, little seal whoops of air, gulped into my upper chest, then rapidly expelled. The 45rpm of breathing. Once I was shown how to play my existence at 33rpm, the long player of breathing, slowly, slowly, the diaphragm inflating like a giant hot-air balloon and then lowering slowly, slowly, the navel trying to kiss the spine, I found a way to remix my anxiety.

The basic, terrifying beat is still there. But when I am paralysed on a bus or train, certain that that funny burning smell no one else seems to have noticed is the first spark of a fire that will cremate me and everyone on board to a fine ash, I observe my breath and sure enough, it is playing at 45rpm. So I slow it down, bring on the remix and the burning smell passes. Recently, as I get more used to taking a lower dose of anti-depressants, I have become something of a breathing DJ, remixing every second of my everyday life.

But every time you think you have it in the bag, there is a rude awakening. A few days ago, I was at a supermarket check-out, waiting to pay for my shopping, when an anxiety attack ambushed me: the sound cut out so that it was like watching a silent movie, my legs turned rubbery, my heart erupted into a runaway hi-NRG beat, a cold sweat wrapped itself about me like moist, chilly, cling-film and, certain that I was seconds away from a) death or b) a rather embarrassing fainting episode, I was about to bolt when I realised that I was breathing badly. My lungs were stuck on a loop of short, too frequent inhalations. Turning my focus to my diaphragm and navel, I brought on the remix to end all remixes and the attack was diluted.

Previously on ER, I would have made a freakshow attraction of myself and stood paralysed at the checkout, dissociating and terrified, bug-eyed and shaky, until the worst of the attack had passed. Breathing is the only lasting way to control and manage anxiety. If you, like me, suffer from anxiety, next time your mind is racing out of control, take a deep breath. As the yoga master BKS Iyengar says: "As long as the breath is still, the mind is still."