A lot of anxiety advice you find on the internet tells you to simply take deep breaths during a panic attack or other anxious times, without much explanation for why it works. The problem with that is when we panic, our brains aren’t likely to take action based on information we don’t trust. Breathing slowly is actually hacking directly into your nervous system’s panic signals. Once you understand the mechanism, you can start using it as a real, immediate intervention instead of just a vague suggestion.
The Manual Override Your Body Already Has
Your autonomic nervous system runs a bunch of things you don’t want to think about – heart rate, digestion, sweating. It comes in two forms: the sympathetic system (your fight-or-flight gas pedal) and the parasympathetic system (your rest-and-digest brake).
Breathing is the odd autonomic function out, because it’s also an automatic function that you can control consciously. In times of anxiety, your amygdala sounds the alarm and your cortisol floods, heart rate spikes, breathing gets fast and shallow. And unhelpfully, your rapid chest breathing triggers the sympathetic fight-or-flight side of your nervous system – which is already running in overdrive – to keep running in overdrive.
Breathing exercises kick the parasympathetic system into gear by sending a message to the brain to “calm down” and “turn up the parasympathetic nervous system.” Abbreviated as PNS, this alternates with your fight-or-flight sympathetic system to regulate stress and bodily functions.
Sensory Anchors and Portable Tools
Breathing techniques are more effective with a sensory anchor – something drawing your attention into your physical self and away from abstract worry and fear. The most powerful sensory anchors are associated with scent. Smell is uniquely effective as a sensory anchor because of its direct link to the limbic system, where anxiety forms.
For this reason, products like the anxiety pen have been successful in the real world as a tangible, portable reminder that you’re practicing mindful breathing and a physical object that you immediately associate with that practice. It takes gentle repetition, as with anything, but eventually, the mere use of the object can serve as an anchor in stressful moments as well.
Aromatherapy isn’t a stand-alone strategy, but it can dramatically enhance the feeling of really ‘being there’ during a breathing session.
Why The Exhale Matters More Than The Inhale
Not all ways of breathing have the same effect. When you inhale, for instance, the diaphragm pulls your liver downward, making space within your rib cage and pulling air into the bottom of your lungs, where blood is best oxygenated. When you exhale, the diaphragm pushes your liver upward, squeezing your lungs and helping carbon dioxide stream out of your bloodstream and into the air.
The vagus nerve, the longest of the cranial nerves, performs a critical role by sending a message to your brain when inhaling and blood pressure increases. This message prompts your brain to lower blood pressure and reduce heart rate. Scientists call it the vagal brake. It’s a braking system that largely calms your fight-or-flight response.
Chest breathing, which includes breathing quickly and/or in a shallow manner while your chest expands more than your lower belly, doesn’t utilize the diaphragm to pull down on the liver. That means chest breathing doesn’t press on the vagus nerve nearly as much.
Techniques That Actually Work Under Pressure
Box breathing, which Navy Seals use in high-stress situations, is simple: Inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. The 4-7-8 method is similar but extends the exhale a little further. Inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. They work by giving your brain a simple task (so it doesn’t join a committee of imaginative worry warts) and by simultaneously inducing the shift in your nervous system described above. The structure is important. Without that concrete counting, there’s no competition with frantic irrational thoughts.
Practice When You Don’t Need It
The most common error people commit in practicing breathing methods is that they resort to those tools only when their anxiety levels hit the maximum. When panic strikes, our most logical brain (the prefrontal cortex) is impaired, and it’s genuinely difficult to master something new during such circumstances. The only way to make those tools work for you automatically is through practice in a relaxed state.
Practicing five minutes of diaphragmatic breathing in the morning, or engaging in box breathing before a stressful meeting, is similar to how you develop muscle memory for any other practiced skill. The aim is to make your breathing response so familiar that you can perform it without even thinking about it when your anxiety is rapidly rising.
Your nervous system can be hijacked. Your breath is the tool that hijacks the hijack – and it’s not because breath work is “relaxing” as we understand the term generally, but that it’s simply not physiologically possible to sustain truly high panic over a series of deep, controlled, exhalations.
