The Doing Well Newsletter | Vol. 10

by Jesse Katches

A Quick Way to Calm Anxiety and Stress

i hope that you’ve had a wonderful and productive week so far. to close it out on this Friday afternoon, i’d like to talk a little bit about a video i posted yesterday focused on quickly reducing stress and anxiety in a moment of need.

the video I posted touched on something called the “physiological sigh,” inspired by the very informative Huberman Labs Podcast. you can watch my video here.

the physiological sigh is actually a breathing pattern that occurs naturally in both humans and animals, usually unconsciously as we’re trying to relax. but the beautiful part about it is - we can use it on command, at any time, to quickly calm an episode of stress or anxiety.

the breathing pattern consists of a double inhale through the nose (one big one followed by a second smaller one to squeeze in extra air) followed by an extended exhale through the mouth. (see the video link above for the demonstration .)

for the sake of not getting too scientific here (email me if you’d like the full scientific breakdown of how/why all of this happens) i’m going to explain why this pattern of breathing works as plainly as possible.

when we become anxious, the alert systems in our body turn on and make us ready for action. when this happens we tend to take shallower breaths and inhale for longer, and more vigorously, than we exhale. because of this - carbon dioxide builds in our bloodstream, which can actually exacerbate the feelings of anxiety. so as we continue this pattern of shallow breathing and accumulating carbon dioxide in our blood without doing anything to pump the breaks, the anxiety has somewhat of a clear runway to take flight.

with that said, possibly the quickest way to prevent this response from continuing to spiral, is by turning off the system in our body that makes us ready for action by instead activating the system in our body that calms us down. that’s where the physiological sigh comes in.

there are millions of little sacks in our lungs that can become deflated when we are in an anxious or stressed state and when we perform the physiological sigh, those sacks become reinflated with oxygen which then allows us to remove as much carbon dioxide out of our bloodstream as possible using the extended exhale. the significant removal of carbon dioxide will help to calm the anxious feelings, and additionally, the long exhale of the sigh will send signals to our brain to slow our heart rate down, and ultimately bring us back to a calm and collected state.

this is personally one of the quickest and most convenient ways that i’ve found for reducing acute stress and anxiety quickly because it can be done in just a few moments from anywhere and at any time. additionally, if i’m going to trust a technique to calm me in a time of need, i’ll personally feel better knowing the mechanisms of why and how it works. so as researching the topic has done for me, i hope my explanation of it can bring some form of comfort to you as well.

please lmk if you have any questions, and aside from that, i hope you have a wonderful, safe, weekend, and as always - i love you and i’m here for you if you need me .

Jesse