Video Shorts: Slow breathe to reach your calm state

Video Shorts

Slow Breathe to Reach Your Calm State

This short video explains why slow breathing and the fear response work and how to reach your calm state by slow breathing.

Approximate Video Transcript

Slow breathing is one of the best things you can do to reset your calm state. So if you're feeling stressed or in the fear response, slow breathing will work to get you to feel calm again.

The reason is that the exhale reduces heart rate. By breathing slowly and prolonging your exhale, your heart rate reduces.

During the fear response, lots of things happen within the body–a physiological response. Breathing, heart rate and blood pressure increase, and adrenalin and cortisol are released–a release of hormones. We're unaware of most of these things, but we can be aware of some of them.

Many autonomic processes go into overdrive, and some slow down or switch off, for example, digestion and reproduction. When you're in the fear response, energy isn't required for digestion or reproduction. Your body is dealing with the emotion of fear; therefore, that energy is needed elsewhere.

Blood flow changes too. Blood flows to the large muscles in your thighs, for example, if you need to run for it. So all these things happen during the fear response. We can't control most of them. We can't say, "hey, heart slow down," and we can't do things just by thinking about it–perhaps through meditation, but with slow breathing, we can control the breathing rate that has gone out of sync. We can slow it down.

Regular breathing rate (calm state) is around 12 to 18 breaths per minute. If we're stressed, it can get much higher than that, let's say in the 20s, up to the 40s. So by reducing our breathing rate to beyond our regular calm state, we can reset it during the fear response.

I usually advocate for four, five or six breaths per minute, which is pretty slow, so it can quickly get you to your calm state. Four breaths per minute are as slow as you should go; don't go lower than that, as it could have detrimental effects. Four, five or six breaths per minute are optimal. If you've got breathing difficulties, see how you go with six breaths per minute, it still might be too much for you. Talk to your doctor first.

Let's take four breaths per minute as an example, as it's easy to do the maths. Breathing in for five seconds and then breathing out for ten seconds, prolonging the exhale. That's going to bring the heart rate down. Go one up from there, five breaths per minute–four seconds in, eight seconds out, or go even higher than that, three seconds in and six seconds out. It should feel like a challenge but not too challenging, so be careful with that.

Another one, a new favourite of mine, is called the physiological sigh. You might recognise it; you might have seen other people do it. Sometimes we do it throughout the day or when we're experiencing certain emotions. I recognise it when I'm feeling sad or crying, for example. The physiological sigh is two inhales and then a long exhale. It looks like this (demo). Remember to prolong your exhale. Inhaling twice means that more of the surface area of the lungs is activated, and therefore, dealing with carbon dioxide more effectively.

Enjoy!