Why a longer exhale calms you down
Five minutes of a simple breathing pattern lifted mood in a Stanford study. Here's what it is, why it seems to work, and how to try it.
When you’re stressed, your breathing speeds up and moves higher in your chest. It’s one of the few parts of the stress response you can change on purpose, and changing it seems to change some of the rest.
In 2023, researchers at Stanford asked 108 people to spend five minutes a day for a month on one of four practices: three kinds of controlled breathing, or mindfulness meditation. Everyone felt less anxious by the end, by roughly the same amount. The difference showed up in mood. The group doing a pattern called cyclic sighing had the biggest daily rise in positive feelings, and their breathing rate at rest slowed more than the meditation group’s.1
What cyclic sighing is
Breathe in through your nose. When your lungs feel full, take a second, shorter sip of air on top. Then breathe out slowly through your mouth until you’re empty, taking longer than the two breaths in took. That’s one cycle. Keep going for five minutes.
Why the exhale matters
Your heart speeds up a little each time you breathe in and slows a little each time you breathe out. Doctors have known this for well over a century. Stretching the exhale gives the slowing side more of each breath, and over a few minutes that’s thought to tip the nervous system from alert toward rest.
The study adds a useful detail. People who practised cyclic sighing breathed more slowly at rest across the whole month, outside their five minutes. Slower resting breathing went along with better mood.
Five minutes a day was enough to see a difference.
What the study didn’t show
It’s one trial with about 25 people per group, and it wasn’t designed to prove that one practice beats another. Heart rate and heart rate variability didn’t change in any group. Mindfulness helped too; the breathing groups just helped mood a bit more. We think that’s a fair reason to try it, and a poor reason to treat it as a cure.
How to try it
Five minutes of cyclic sighing
- Sit or lie down and set a timer for five minutes.
- Breathe in through your nose, then add a short second breath in.
- Let the air out slowly through your mouth. Don't push it; let it fall out.
- Repeat until the timer ends. If you feel lightheaded, slow down or stop.
