How to Promote Calm: Science-Backed Breathing
1: Stress gets a bad name.
Like many things in life, the Goldilocks rule applies here.
Too much stress. Not good. In fact, it will kill us.
But too little stress is not good either.
To perform at our best, we want to harness stress and use it to our advantage.
Or as Goldilocks says, “Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.”
“Stress is a necessary part of life,” Sahil Bloom writes in his book The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.
“Stress is not black-and-white,” he notes. “Like most things, it exists on a spectrum. In fact, when it comes to performance in important moments, too little stress is just as bad as too much stress.”
The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that stress and performance are positively correlated.
But only to a certain point. After which, more stress reduces performance.
Our goal is to learn to work with stress instead of against it. We perform at our best when we “operate in the optimal stress environment for important tasks and the low stress environment for recovery,” Sahil explains.
2: It’s helpful to take a step back and categorize the different levels of stress.
Low stress: “This is a state of low arousal,” Sahil notes. “This state is necessary for recovery.”
Optimal stress: The optimal state of arousal. Not too much. Not too little. “When we’re in this state,” he notes, “we are well positioned to perform important tasks.”
High stress: “This is a state of high arousal,” Sahil explains, “the overstressed position we so often find ourselves in. It may lead to a complete shutdown from system overload.”
To optimize our performance, we need to learn how to operate in a state of “optimal stress” when performing important tasks.
Then, at other times, we need to downshift and operate in a low-stress state to maximize our recovery.
“In reality,” he observes, “most people find themselves tipping over the edge into the state of high stress too often and fail to reset to the state of low stress frequently enough to recover.”
3: One tool we can use to help us navigate the different levels of stress is our breathing. We can teach ourselves how to enter into a low-stress recovery state
Sahil shares three science-backed breathing protocols to transform stress from our “sworn enemy” into a “good friend (or at least our friendly acquaintance!).”
Breathing Protocol #1: The 4-7-8 Method: This breathing method is particularly effective for triggering the calm state necessary for falling asleep.
How it works:
- We breathe in through our nose for four seconds.
- Hold our breath for seven seconds.
- Exhale for eight seconds.
- Repeat two to three times.
Breathing Protocol #2: The Lion’s Breath: This technique comes from ancient yogic traditions in India.
How it works:
- Sit in a comfortable position on the floor with a slight forward lean and our hands on the floor.
- Focus our gaze on the tip of our nose.
- Inhale deeply through our nose.
- Stick our tongue out and down to our chin. Exhale forcefully with a “Ha!” sound. (Note: Limit the forcefulness of the exhale if we’re a beginner.)
- Repeat two to three times.
Breathing Protocol #3: The Physiological Sigh: This breathing approach creates a relaxing sensation by rapidly releasing carbon dioxide into our bloodstream. We do this naturally when carbon dioxide levels are too high.
It is remarkably effective at promoting calm. We can use it to moderate stress in our bodies prior to engaging in high-stress activities like public speaking.
First introduced in the 1930s, the Physiological Sigh was reintroduced more recently by UCLA neurobiologist Jack Feldman and Stanford biochemist Mark Krasnow.
How it works:
- We inhale twice through our noses, first slowly, then quickly.
- Long exhale through our mouth to a natural stop without forcing the breath.
- Repeat two to three times.
Try one of these breathing protocols today and notice the difference.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: When I start tipping into that high‑stress, overloaded state, do I have simple tools ready—like these breathing practices—or do I just push through and hope for the best?
Action: Pick one of the three breathing protocols and practice it every day this week—once in a calm moment and once when I feel my stress rising—so it becomes a reliable, automatic tool I can trust.