August 2024

Reduce Anxiety & Stress with the Physiological Sigh

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Dr. Andrew Huberman

Breathwork is a term for various breathing practices in which the conscious control of breathing influences a person’s mental, emotional, and/or physical state, with a therapeutic effect.

For example, many of you would have heard of the Relaxing Breath – where whatever count you inhale for (e.g., 3), you double the exhale (e.g., 6) to experience a relaxing effect.  Click here to try it out.

Or perhaps you’ve heard of Box Breathing – which is used to become calm and focused.  Excellent to use before or during a stressful time, like exams.  Its name refers to the fact that a box has four sides, a concept represented here by breathing while you slowly count to four for a total of four times — four counts of breathing in, four counts of holding your breath, four counts of exhaling and four more counts of holding after your exhale. Click here to try it out for a one minute.

Today, I want to introduce you to the Physiological Sigh. This controlled double inhalation followed by long exhalation lowers heart rate, calms the mind, and relieves stress in just 60 seconds. It’s a portable way to press pause on your day whenever you need.  Dr Huberman has such a great way of explaining and demonstrating this technique.  I hope you will enjoy this short video and also try out the other two techniques mentioned.  It’s wonderful to have these tools available to us literally at our finger lung tips, to help us self-regulate when we need it most.

Happy breathing!