A Simple Breathing Exercise To Calm Your Mind & Body
Not all breaths are created equal. Case in point: A simple, timed breath routine where the exhales are longer than the inhales can be powerful enough to soothe the nervous system and the overworked mind.
What makes this kind of breathing so calming?
When your exhale is even a few counts longer than your inhale, the vagus nerve (running from the neck down through the diaphragm) sends a signal to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system commands your fight-or-flight response. When it fires, your heart rate and breathing speed up and stress hormones like cortisol start pumping through your bloodstream, preparing your body to face a threat. If the threat is "A lion is chasing me and I need to run away," this response is helpful. But if the threat is "I'm late to work!" this response not particularly helpful—and, in fact, it can be damaging. When cortisol is elevated too frequently or for too long, it disturbs the body's hormone production.
The parasympathetic system, on the other hand, controls your rest, relax, and digest response. When the parasympathetic system is dominant, your breathing slows, your heart rate drops, your blood pressure lowers, and your body is guided back into a state of calm and healing.
Putting your body in a parasympathetic state is easier than you might think; it just takes a slight manipulation of the breath.
Step-by-step instructions for this calming 2-1-4-1 breath:
- To begin, sit still and tall somewhere comfortable. Close your eyes and being breathing through your nose.
- Inhale for a count of 2. Pause at the top of your inhale for a count of 1.
- Exhale gently, for a count of 4. Pause at the bottom of your exhale for a count of 1.
- Keep your breathing even and smooth. If the 2-4 count feels too short, try increasing the breath lengths to 4 in and 6 out, 6 in and 8 out, and so on. (If longer breaths create any anxiety, there is no need to push yourself. The most important thing is that the exhale is longer than the inhale.)
- Set a timer and breathe this way for at least 5 minutes to see a difference in your mood.
Robin Berzin, M.D., is a functional medicine physician and the founder of Parsley Health. She currently lives in New York, NY and her mission is to make functional medicine affordable and modern, so more people can access a holistic, root-cause approach to health.
A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Berzin went to medical school at Columbia University and later trained in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is also a certified yoga instructor and a meditation teacher, and has formally studied Ayurveda. Dr. Berzin writes for a number of leading wellness sites, and speaks regularly for organizations including the Clinton Foundation, Health 2.0, Summit and the Functional Forum, on how we can reinvent health care.
She's also a mindbodygreen courses instructor, teaching her Stress Solution program designed to help you tune down the stress in your life and tune up your energy and happiness.