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Ask most people to take a deep breath and they go for the in-breath. Big gulp, shoulders up, chest out. Then they let it all go in a rush and wonder why they don’t feel any calmer.
When I start working with someone, I usually start at the other end. I ask them to breathe out.
Why the out-breath
When you’re stressed, your breathing tends to go short and high. You take air in, you don’t fully let it go, and you take the next breath before you’ve finished the last one. Plenty of people breathe like that all day without realising. I did for years.
A longer, slower out-breath is one of the simplest ways I know to tell your body it’s okay to stand down. You don’t have to believe anything for it to help. You just have to do it for a few minutes.
There’s another reason I start there. The in-breath is something you do. The out-breath is something you let happen. A lot of the people I work with are very good at doing and pretty out of practice at letting go. Starting with the out-breath means they practise the part they find harder.
Try this
Sit or lie down somewhere you won’t be interrupted for five minutes. Put one hand on your belly.
Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4. Breathe out slowly for a count of 6, through your nose or mouth, whichever feels easier. Let the out-breath be long and easy, not forced. If 6 feels like a stretch, try in for 3 and out for 5. The longer out-breath matters more than the numbers.
Keep going for five minutes. Your shoulders might drop. You might yawn, or feel your belly move under your hand for the first time all day. Or not much might happen at all. Any of that’s fine.
A few places it’s useful: before you open your laptop, in the car before you walk into the house, or lying awake at 3am.
If you feel dizzy or light-headed, go back to normal breathing. This practice has no breath holds. If you’re pregnant, or you have a heart condition, epilepsy or a breathing problem, check with your GP before you try anything stronger than this.
Where it goes from here
This is where I start in sessions, not the whole of it. In a one-to-one breathwork session the breathing goes further, and I’m with you the whole way through. But I still come back to a long, slow out-breath at the end, so you’re not getting up off the floor wound up.
If you’d like to try it with me guiding you, book a free 30-minute discovery call and tell me what’s going on for you.
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