How to Control Stress with Breathing

How to Control Stress with Breathing

The power of controlling your stress levels in the present is a superpower, or at least it feels like one. Through physiology and neuroscience, as taught by Andrew Huberman, you can use your breathing to directly impact your heart rate and the level of stress you feel. Here's how it works:

When you inhale, your diaphragm moves down, creating more space in your thoracic cavity, which causes your heart to enlarge. This slows down the rate of blood flow, sending a signal from the sinoatrial node to your brain. In other words, inhaling speeds up your heart rate.

The opposite is just as valid; when you exhale, your diaphragm moves up, making your heart smaller, which accelerates the rate of blood flow. This triggers a signal from the sinoatrial node to your brain to slow down your heart rate. If you want to be more alert, take deeper and longer inhales.

To calm down, make your exhales longer and more intense. This is known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, or heart rate variability (HRV). In conclusion, breathing deeper and longer will increase your heart rate and exhaling longer and more vigorously will let you relax in real-time.

Here’s how to perform this breathing technique:

1. Find a comfortable seated position and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths.

2. Inhale for 4 seconds, counting each second in your head.

3. Hold your breath for 4 seconds.

4. Exhale for 4 seconds, counting each second in your head.

5. Hold your breath for 4 seconds.

6. To increase alertness, inhale more deeply or vigorously. To calm down, exhale slightly longer than your inhale. That’s it!

Try it the next time you’re feeling anxious and need to relax.

🚀Weekly Growth Tip:

You can also use this technique at night to go to sleep. Before I started doing mindfulness, I would often have a hard time winding down at night and going to sleep. This breathing technique changed all of that. Try it the next time you lay down to rest and your next move could be eye opening when you wake up the next morning. I hope this helps.