Slow Breathing—breathe less for more focus and less stress

Welcome to Stretch—I’m Charlotte, a certified breathwork facilitator and online writer. My goal is to inspire you to be curious about your body and how you can use it to be more focused, creative and resilient.

⏪ Last time, I shared my goals for my body-based productivity experiment—all about prioritising my body over my mind and seeing how that affects my energy, creativity and motivation levels.

⏩ This edition, we’re talking about slow breathing, and the benefits for your brain and body.

Hey, ho, hello!

So, a couple of weeks ago I ran my first livestream on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Bit nervous at the start, not sure if anyone would show up (38 people did! 👀) but as soon as I started talking, I felt completely in flow. There’s no second guessing, no overthinking. I’m genuinely having fun.

As I’m on this “pathless path”, having quit my full-time job and going all in on breathwork, doubts often creep in. Doing these livestreams is such a motivating reminder that this is exactly what I need to be doing—even if it’s hard.

So what did I talk about in my first livestream?

My favorite breath topic: Slow breathing.

Learning how to slow down your breathing was my first introduction to this concept of “breathwork.” I was taking a freediving course, and as we were preparing for our first dive, we did a slow breathing exercise. I experienced a palpable shift in the volume and intensity of my thoughts, and from then on, I was hooked.

I quickly learned that slow breathing is not just a nice relaxation technique. It’s a necessity for a functioning brain and body. Most of us breathe too fast, and too much.

So in the session, I cover a few topics:

• Why does overbreathing disrupt focus and increase anxiety?

• How do you know how fast you're breathing?

• How can you slow down your breathing, and why would you care to put any effort into that?

• A guided 3-minute coherent breathing exercise

I’m sharing a recap of the key points below, but if you want to catch up on the session and do the exercises with me, you can watch it here:

We assume our body reflexively knows how much air it needs at all times, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Our bodies have adapted to our modern lifestyles, which involve chronic stress, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diets, overheated homes, and lack of movement. Even our jobs where we do a lot more talking than our ancestors did, contribute to fast breathing.

All of that has led to a culture of dysfunctional overbreathing, for some people up to 2- 3x the required amount!

I’ll explain in a moment why this matters, but first, what do I mean by “fast” breathing?

Step 1: Measure your breathing rate

• Set a timer for 1 minute.

• During this minute, count the number of breath cycles. (One breath cycle = one inhale + one exhale)

• Breathe normally, don’t change anything about your breathing. This is not a competition in any way, this is purely a rough assessment of your breathing rate at rest.

How many cycles did you have? (Feel free to hit reply and let me know!)

Of course, this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Your true breathing rate, when you're not paying attention, is likely slightly higher than what you've just counted. This can also vary depending on the day—how stressed you are, how well you slept, what you ate, and so on.

But it’s good to give us a sense of where we are in the larger context of overbreathing.

Step 2: Understand what overbreathing does to your brain and body

In terms of what your body and your metabolism need when at rest (so not speaking, eating or exercising), healthy breathing is roughly 12 breath cycles per minute.

Most people breathe much faster: 15-20 and even up to 30 breaths.

Now, you might think, “Okay, sure. But why is that so bad? It’s just oxygen.” That’s where it gets really interesting. It’s not just oxygen and overbreathing might be having a big impact on how your moods, energy levels, sleep and productivity.

I’ll give you two reasons why:

01 - Oxygen and carbon dioxide imbalance

We breathe in oxygen, and we breathe out carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not just a waste gas that we want to get rid of. It’s a very important gas that regulates our blood pH, and we need a certain amount of it in our system.

When we’re overbreathing—breathing too fast and too much—we’re bringing in more oxygen than we need as well as offloading more CO2 than we should.

The lack of CO2 means that the oxygen you’re bringing in can’t be delivered as effectively to all of your cells and tissues, including your brain. Studies show a 30-40% reduction of oxygen delivery.

Less oxygen to the brain = hyperexcitability, anxiety, and difficulty focusing. Not ideal.

I write in more detail about the relationship between oxygen and carbon dioxide here.

02 - Sympathetic nervous system dominance

The other component to consider here is that our body works in bi-directional mechanisms. It’s very intuitive:

How we feel, impacts how we breathe.

• When we’re relaxed, our parasympathetic nervous system is dominant and our breathing is gentle, deep and slow. 

• When we’re stressed, our sympathetic nervous system is dominant and our breathing is faster, shallower and heavier. 

• This cycle automatically managed by our autonomic nervous system, and we move along this arousal continuum throughout the day.

• A healthy nervous system’s baseline is around alert and calm, and can easily move up and down the continuum, as needed.

Now, these mechanisms also work in reverse.

How we breathe, impacts how we feel.

• When we speed up our breathing, we increase sympathetic activation and move up on the arousal continuum.

• When we slow down our breathing, we increase parasympathetic activation and move down on the arousal continuum.

When our default breathing pattern is to breathe shallow and fast, we are keeping our nervous system in a state of activation and alertness. Instead of our baseline being a balanced nervous system where we feel alert and calm, our baseline moves up and we are in a near constant state of sympathetic dominance, feeling alert and stressed (or even very stressed) most of the time.

We’re basically in a chronic state of alertness and activation, without being aware of it.

Of course, breathing fast over a short period of time, when exercising or when doing certain breathing exercises, is not an issue, but it becomes an issue when we breathe this way over years and years, and it becomes our default breathing pattern.

By the way, I think having a basic understanding of your autonomic nervous system is life-changing. I write more about it here.

Step 3: Practice coherent breathing

The good news is: with time and dedication, you can retrain your breathing patterns. I’ve been working on this for the past 18 months and I notice significant changes in how well I can control my breathing in moments of stress and overwhelm. It’s become a really powerful tool for me.

One of the best techniques to start with is coherent breathing, a simple exercise where you focus on taking deep, slow and controlled breaths. It’s usually 5 seconds inhale and 5 seconds exhale, coming out to 6 breaths per minute.

You can follow the coherent breathing exercise from 17:35 in the recording.

Now, if this felt too fast or too slow, that’s totally fine. It takes some time to figure out the right breathing rate for your unique nervous system. For example, you might need to start at 8 breaths per minute and slowly decrease over time as you become more comfortable.

To be clear: you don’t need to breathe like this all day long. My recommendation is to start with short sessions (2-5 minutes) and gradually increase to 10-20 minutes. Your brain will adapt to this, and you’ll develop an awareness and you can make a conscious choice to slow down your breathing when you’re rushed or stressed.

Want some guidance to implement this?

I am taking people through a 5-week program to help change their breathing patterns and incorporate breathwork and movement into their day to day. No one needs more information. But most people can use support and daily accountability to take consistent action. I recently started working with an investment banker working 16-hour days, and one week in, he told me the first technique of simply focusing on 2-3 deep, expansive breaths while at his desk have felt like a massive win.

If you’re interested in learning more, book a chat with me.

What else I’m up to…