JUST BREATHE: A Quick, Easy Exercise to Immediately Lower Stress

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Practising breathing really is low hanging fruit with a huge benefit. We need to breathe and frankly we don’t have much choice in the matter if we want to survive. When we practice particular types of deep breathing, we can have an immediate impact in terms of relaxing our nervous system. Breathing exercises can be extremely useful to assist with sleep, or simply to help you maintain some degree of equanimity in a traffic jam or argument with a loved one. Breathing exercises can bring us from a state of agitation, or “fight or flight” to a place of more calm. More calm often means more comfortable and more effective. Although these exercises can be used as needed, it is also not a bad idea to practise breathing exercises several times a day in order to bring down our overall level of anxiety. The good news is that breathing exercises are portable and require nothing but your body. Even in the context of pandemic parenting, you can grab 5 minutes in the bathroom, before getting out of bed, or on a quick walk. Here is a very simple technique that can be done anywhere, virtually any time.

4-7-8 Breathing

How to:

According to Dr. Andrew Weil, who founded this technique (Dr. Weil’s Breathing Exercises: 4-7-8 Breath drweil.com) you will want to sit with a straight back, and place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth.

1. Exhale completely though your mouth;
2. Close your mouth and inhale deeply for four seconds through your nose;
3. Hold your breath for a count of seven seconds;
4. Exhale completely through your mouth (which makes a whoosh sound) for a count of 8 seconds.
5. Repeat this cycle 3 more times…..

Note: you might feel a little light headed the first few times you try this, and that is entirely normal. Notice any changes to your nervous system. Small practices can offer us large returns in terms of stress relief.