Deep, diaphragmatic breathing can decrease stress and anxiety. Here are three more effective breathing techniques to calm your mind and body.
Connecting with the breath is an evidence-based way to create calm in just a few minutes. It’s the mind-breath connection that makes it possible. When we take a few deep breaths, it stimulates the vagus nerve, sending a signal to the parasympathetic nervous system to calm the body. Our heart rate slows, blood pressure decreases, and muscles relax, thereby inducing a sense of peace and tranquility.
For more details on the mind-body connection see this post.
Reasons to connect with your breath
There are many deep breathing techniques available. I’ve tried a lot of them and recommend you do the same. It’s good to find a favorite, go-to technique. If we practice it regularly when we aren’t stressed, we build a habit that is more readily available to us in a time of need. If that’s not incising enough, here are five more reasons to learn to connect with your breath.
- It’s super easy to learn. There are multiple breathing techniques. We just have to find the one that works best for us.
- We can do it anywhere, like while driving, in a work meeting, or to stop ourselves from yelling at our kids. No one even has to know we’re doing it.
- Connecting with the breath requires no resources. It’s quick, free, abundant, and always available to us.
- It creates a brief pause in which we can become mindful of our thoughts and emotions, bring ourselves back into awareness of the moment, or even get a needed mental break before rushing to the next task.
- It can stop anxiety by tamping down the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. (My personal favorite !)
Deep breathing techniques
Regardless of which breathing technique you use, slow, deep inhalations and exhalations are important. This is what’s believed to stimulate the vagus nerve. Newer research indicates an asymmetric breathing pattern, or exhalations done for double the length of the inhalations, calms the body in about two minutes.[1] If you struggle with extending your exhales in this way, don’t fret. Whether symmetric or asymmetric, connecting with the breath is usually effective relatively quickly.
Previously, I posted instructions for three breathing techniques. Below are three additional practices to try. I recommend playing around with them, trying them in different settings, and at multiple times to determine which ones you prefer. Just know that if you don’t like a particular technique, there are many more to try. It’s about finding what works for you.
See my initial post with instructions on three breathing techniques for calm.
A note about anxiety and breathing
If you suffer from anxiety, focusing on your breath can sometimes exacerbate the anxiety. In a recent Ten Percent Happier podcast, Leslie Booker discussed this in greater detail. She’s one of America’s leading dharma teachers and appeared in an episode dedicated to Buddhist lessons on anxiety.
In her experience, there’s a tendency to focus on the area from the tip of our nose and the top of the lip when first learning to breathe. This shortens the space in which we have to breathe and can make the anxiety worse. I’ve experienced this myself. I tend to engage in short, shallow breaths when anxious and stressed.
Instead, she recommends dropping the breath down lower into the body using a diaphragmatic breath. You’ve done this before if you’ve held your hand over your lower belly and forced it to rise and fall with each breath. This allows more space for the breath to move, making it less likely to exacerbate the anxiety. Once you’ve mastered diaphragmatic breathing, take it to the next level with one of the techniques below.
4-7-8 breathing
This breathing technique involves exhaling at twice the length of your inhale but also includes a timed breath hold in-between. If you struggle to hold your breath, you can shorten each step, but keep the proportions the same.
Practice 4-7-8 breathing:
- Inhale through your nose normally, counting to four as you inhale.
- Hold your breath for seven seconds.
- Exhale slowly through your mouth, using pursued lips, for eight seconds.
- Repeat for a total of four breaths.
Square breathing
After posting my original three breathing techniques on the Working On Calm facebook page, a reader told me about square breathing. She learned to use it as an emergency worker. It’s taught as an easy way to clear the mind and de-stress before or after responding to an event. Plus, it can be done right in the emergency response vehicle.
What I love about this technique is the combination of controlled breathing and visualization, which makes it particularly good for an anxious mind in need of distraction. In addition, it’s a good option if you struggle with an extended exhale since it is a symmetric technique. In square breathing both the inhalations and exhalations are done for the same amount of time.
Practice square breathing:
- Inhale normally through your nose for the count of four while mentally drawing one side of a square.
- Hold your breath for four seconds while visualizing the second side of the square.
- Exhale slowly through your mouth for the count of four while mentally drawing the third side of the square.
- Pause for four seconds while completing the square.
- Repeat for one minute.
Physiological sigh breathing
I mentioned Dr. Andrew Huberman’s podcast, Huberman Lab, in a previous Take Five newsletter. I love how he approaches the human body as a machine and teaches us to understand the underlying mechanisms. Plus, he favors behavioral and no-cost tools for creating optimal health. One point he made during a podcast, which I found particularly relevant to Working On Calm, is the difficulty in attempting to control the mind with the mind. Instead, we can learn to control the mind with the body. This underscores the importance of the mind-body connection.
In Huberman’s podcast on stress and anxiety, he discussed a technique referred to as the physiological sigh. This involves taking two inhales before exhaling, which forces the tiny sacks of air in the lungs to fully expand. It brings in more oxygen and blows off more carbon dioxide than normal breathing. I started using this technique regularly and notice a big difference. Previously, I struggled to hold my breath or extend my exhales. Now, if I start with a double inhale, I can exhale for much longer.
Practice physiological sigh breathing:
- Inhale slowly through the nose until your lungs feel comfortably expanded.
- Pause briefly before taking another quick inhale through the nose. (Think of this as topping off the lungs or sniffing a runny nose.)
- Exhale through the mouth slowly.
- Repeat for thirty seconds, or longer if needed.
I like all three of these techniques and use them at different times. Give them a try and see if they work for you too. I’d love to hear about your experience. Please join the Working On Calm community and leave me a comment!
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[1] Bergland, C. (May 9, 2019). Longer Exhalations Are an Easy Way to Hack Your Vagus Nerve. Psychology Today. Retrieved July 7, 2021 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201905/longer-exhalations-are-easy-way-hack-your-vagus-nerve.
