Inhale. Hold. Exhale. How breathing techniques calm the mind.
A simple way to cope with stress and anxiety throughout the workday.
Cuely Team
You shipped a new build and everything was going smoothly until you get that dreaded alert – the website is down (did you clear your cache?). Anxiety starts setting in, you’re debugging and know if you can’t figure it out in the next two minutes, you’ll be eating pizza at your desk into the early hours of tomorrow morning. Seriously, did they clear their cache?
Research shows that how you breathe can actually affect how we feel. Normal respiratory rates are 12 to 18 breaths per minute for an adult, but jump up to 20 breaths per minute if you get panicked. Controlling your breathing can reset the panic and bring you back to normal range. That’s why the box breathing is taught and used by the Navy Seals (they’re awesome).
Healthline has a great run down of 10 different techniques
- Pursed lip breathing
- Belly breathing
- Breath focus
- Lion's breath
- Alternate nostril breathing
- Equal breathing
- Resonant breathing
- Sitali breath
- Deep breathing
- Humming bee breath
Okay, so back to the dead website. You took 2 minutes to breathe. You doubled down with a short walk. And like magic, the ticket is closed (they cleared their cache and it actually worked.) Rest easy and get yourself a proper meal. 🥗