A Simple Stress-Reducing Breathing Tool to Calm You Down

This science-based tool makes you relaxed and calms you down in real-time.

It’s Tuesday morning, a few minutes before you have to give a talk on stage. 400 people are in the audience. Normally, you don’t experience any anxiety or stress. But giving a talk to this many people…

The nervousness is coming. Your heart is beating faster, your blood pressure is rising, your breathing quickens increasing your alertness and energy, your palms are starting to sweat, your view is getting narrower, your body starts to tremble and you’re starting to realize the nervousness is taking over your mind and body. There’s no time to calm down your mind and body by doing meditation, exercises or yoga. If only there was a tool to calm you down in real-time.

Well, there is!

Neuroscientist dr. Andrew Huberman and his colleagues from Stanford University have devised a breathing technique to relax and calm you down as quickly as possible by initiating the physiological sigh reflex.

This interesting strategy triggers the activation of a subset of neurons in the brainstem that ‘reset’ your breathing cycle. By triggering you to sigh, the carbon dioxide levels in your bloodstream and lungs decrease so that the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide is recalibrated.

The physiological sigh is a pattern of breathing in which two inhales through the nose is followed by an exhale through the mouth.

Dr. Andrew Huberman explained how it works:

“You have little sacks of air in the lungs, which increase the volume of air that you can bring in. Those sacks collapse over time, and as a result, oxygen levels start to go down and carbon dioxide levels go up in the bloodstream and body, and that is a big part of the signaling of the stress response.”

The second inhale of the physiological sigh “pops” the alveoli (little air sacks in the lungs) open, allowing oxygen in and enabling you to offload carbon dioxide in the long exhale out.

This reflex is crucial to keep the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the correct balance for your lungs and body to work as efficiently as possible.

Normally, this happens unconsciously throughout the whole day and night (roughly every 5 minutes). Moreover, new scientific evidence revealed that this reflex is activated in claustrophobic situations to release the extra levels of carbon dioxide from your body.

Instead of waiting for the deliberated sigh to happen to ‘reset’ yourself when you’re under stress, this breathing technique will help you to calm down and relax as quickly as possible.

I regularly use this technique and have found it very useful in calming down my mind and body and releasing the energy behind the situation that caused me to feel panicked in the first place.

It’s a simple technique, this is what you have to do:

• Inhale through your nose
• Then inhale again through your nose
• Followed by doing a long, slow extended exhale through your mouth

Repeating this 2–3 times helps you to regain a feeling of stability and control under the circumstances and will bring you into a more relaxed state.

Dr. Andrew Huberman gives an example of how to execute this breathing technique at 1.24 min.

I have to point out one important thing.

Slowing down your heart rate takes more time than slowing down your breathing rate. It takes around 20 to 40 seconds to slow down your heart rate so you have to be a little bit patient. This is because the neural circuits controlling the heart work at a slower rate than those for the lungs.

I hope this article can help you overcome anxiety or stress at any particular moment. Try out this breathing technique this week and let me know how you go!

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