The Perfect Breath: How to Use Coherent Breathing to Calm Down

The perfect breath, also known as coherent breathing, is a very simple technique you can use any time you’re feeling stressed or anxious to immediately calm yourself down. If you want an easy tool, you’re in the right place.

This was my, one of my favorite breathing techniques discussed by James Nestor in his book, Breath. Something I highly recommend. But don’t worry, you don’t have to read the book. I’ll teach you how to do it today.

So let’s give it a try.

The perfect breath: You want to sit up straight, close your mouth, and inhale and exhale through your nose. Try to do it for about five and a half seconds for each inhale and five and a half seconds for each exhale. What this does is it creates a rhythmic breathing pattern that averages out to about five to six breaths per minute.

Why is this important or why does it work?

• It slows down our breathing. Most of us are breathing way too fast, way too often, and so it’s an easy way to slow down your pace.[1]

• It gets the cardiovascular system, the lungs, the heart, all in a coherent state where they’re firing together more effectively. [2]  

• And studies have shown that it decreases the blood pressure[3], it manages stress and anxiety[4], and activates that parasympathetic nervous system.

I personally have found breathing to be the number one way to control my own anxiety. So anytime I notice I’m not feeling great, I will pause and I will take the perfect breath. Five and a half seconds inhale, five and a half seconds exhale. It’s that simple.

If you do it about 10 times, that will put you at the two minute mark. It’s a great place to start, or you can even work your way up to five minutes for even more relaxation and calming.

One tip I recommend is to download the paced breathing app. I found that really helpful. You can set your own timer and your own inhale and exhale. It plays a sound as you inhale, so you can look at an image and follow it for breathing. You could hear the sound, you could place your hand on your belly so you can get three of the senses activated at once while you practice your paced breathing, which is really a great grounding technique.

So in summary, try the perfect breathing technique. It’s a five and a half second inhale, and a five and a half second exhale. It’s an evidence-based way to calm down after just two minutes of practicing it.

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