The quickest breathing technique for calming down

Babies do it after a long cry. Dogs do it when they finally settle on the rug. You probably did it this morning without noticing: a deep breath in, a little extra sip of air on top, and a long, slow breath out.

That's a sigh, and it turns out to be one of the fastest ways we know to calm the body down.

Your built-in reset

Humans sigh roughly every five minutes, usually without realising. In 2016, researchers Jack Feldman at UCLA and Mark Krasnow at Stanford identified the small cluster of brain cells that triggers these sighs. Sighing seems to help keep the lungs working well. The tiny air sacs in our lungs can partly collapse over time, and the extra-deep breath of a sigh opens them up again.

We also sigh more when we're stressed, and there's growing evidence that sighing on purpose can bring stress down.

What the research found

In 2023, a team at Stanford University asked volunteers to spend five minutes a day on one of several breathing exercises, or on mindfulness meditation, for a month. All of the practices helped. But the group doing "cyclic sighing", which is deliberate, repeated sighs, saw the biggest improvement in mood and the biggest drop in breathing rate at rest.

It was a fairly small study, so it's not the last word. Still, it adds weight to something many people find in practice: a few slow sighs can change how you feel within a minute or two.

How to do it

1. Breathe in through your nose until your lungs feel comfortably full.
2. Without breathing out, take a second, shorter breath in through your nose to top up. It may only be a small sip of air.
3. Breathe out slowly through your mouth, for as long as is comfortable. Aim for an out-breath that's at least twice as long as the in-breaths together.
4. Repeat two or three times for a quick reset, or keep going for up to five minutes.

You don't need to count. Just keep the out-breath long and unhurried, as though you're gently letting the air go rather than pushing it out.

Why the long breath out matters

The out-breath is where the calming happens. When you breathe out slowly, your heart rate dips a little. It's controlled by the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the heart, lungs and gut, and is part of the system that settles the body after stress.

Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner has spent years studying this nerve's role in calm and connection. His work links it with feelings of safety, warmth and care. A long sigh is one of the simplest ways to send that "you're safe" signal to your own body.

When to use it

Because it's so quick, the double-breath sigh works well in moments where you don't have time for anything longer:

• before you walk into a difficult meeting
• when you've just read an email that made your chest tighten
• in traffic, at a red light
• when you're lying awake and your mind won't settle

It's also discreet. A sigh is so normal that nobody will notice you doing it.

Make it automatic

Stanford behaviour scientist BJ Fogg suggests linking a new habit to something you already do, in the form "After I ___, I will ___". Try "After I close a video call, I'll take two slow sighs" or "After I sit down on the train, I'll do one minute of sighing". Practising when you're calm makes it far easier to reach for when you're not.

If you feel light-headed, slow down and take fewer breaths. That's a sign you're breathing more than you need to.

Try it now

Two breaths in through the nose, one long breath out through the mouth. Do it three times. Then notice your shoulders, your jaw and your heartbeat.