The 60-Second Stress Reset: Use Your Breath to Change Your State
Stress does not always arrive with flashing lights and sirens.
Sometimes it is an email.
Sometimes it is traffic.
Sometimes it is somebody saying something irritating at exactly the wrong moment.
And sometimes you cannot even identify what is bothering you. You just notice that your shoulders are tighter, your jaw is clenched, your breathing has become shallow and you feel slightly less comfortable in your own skin.
One of the simplest tools we have for interrupting that state is something we are already doing approximately every few seconds:
Breathing.
Stress changes your breathing
Think about what happens when something suddenly frightens you.
You gasp.
Your breathing becomes faster.
You may even temporarily hold your breath.
Breathing is unusual because it happens automatically, but we can also deliberately change it. That gives us an interesting way of influencing our state.
Research supports this idea. In a randomized study published in Cell Reports Medicine, participants practiced five minutes per day of several different breathing techniques or mindfulness meditation. All produced benefits, but an exhale-focused technique called cyclic sighing produced particularly promising improvements in mood and reductions in respiratory rate.
Fortunately, you don’t need twenty minutes, incense and a meditation cushion to experiment with your breathing.
You can start in about sixty seconds.
Try the long-exhale reset
Sit or stand comfortably.
Take a relaxed breath in through your nose.
Then breathe out slowly and comfortably, allowing the exhale to last slightly longer than the inhale.
For example:
Breathe in for about four seconds.
Breathe out for about six seconds.
Don’t strain. Don’t try to fill your lungs to maximum capacity. Don’t force yourself to breathe unusually deeply.
Simply make your breathing a little slower and let the exhale become relaxed and unhurried.
Repeat this for approximately one minute.
Another option is one or two gentle physiological sighs: inhale comfortably, take a second smaller inhale, and then allow a long relaxed exhale.
Then return to normal breathing.
If any breathing exercise makes you uncomfortable or lightheaded, stop and simply breathe normally.
Don’t wait until you are extremely stressed
The best time to practice this may not be when you are already at nine out of ten on the stress scale.
Build it into ordinary moments.
Try sixty seconds:
- before starting the car;
- before walking into an important meeting;
- after a difficult telephone call;
- before replying to an irritating email;
- when you first sit down at your desk;
- or before you walk through the front door at the end of the day.
The duck and the breath
In our “I Don’t Give A Duck” article, I described using a small rubber duck as an anchor — something that reminds you of the pure joy of a young child feeding ducks beside a river.
The duck changes your focus.
Breathing gives you another tool that may help change your physiological state.
Put the two together.
See the duck.
Pause.
Take several slow breaths.
Remember something joyful.
Then decide how you want to respond to whatever happens next.
Stress is part of life. The objective is not to construct a world in which nothing ever irritates, challenges or worries us.
A more useful question may be:
How quickly can I recognize that my state has changed — and what tools do I have to change it again?
Your breath is one of those tools.
And fortunately, you take it everywhere.
Read “I Don’t Give A Duck…” and discover four more simple ways to stress less.