Are you feeling stressed? For many people, the answer is often a resounding yes, with stress being one of the greatest weights on our mental health and a silent contributor to many physical ailments as well.
Deep breathing serves as a way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for rest and relaxation, which can then reduce your stress and clear your mind for greater productivity, decision-making, and sleep. Box breathing is one form of deep breathing that is easy to learn and implement, making it a worthwhile tool to have ready to use.
What is Box Breathing?
Box breathing, also known as square breathing, is a deep breathing technique that helps to distract your mind and slow down your breathing, which can then calm your nervous system and lower your stress levels.
It’s called box breathing because it is completed in increments of four, just like a box has four sides. To add a visual element to your box breathing, you can imagine going around a box as you count—each time you get back to your starting side, you switch to the next step, whether it’s inhaling, holding your breath, or exhaling.
How To Do Box Breathing
Box breathing is a quick and easy practice to learn and implement. Since it only requires you to focus on your breathing, you can also implement it at any time you feel your stress levels rising, whether you’re at work or lying in bed at night trying to fall asleep.
There are only four steps for box breathing:
- Breathe in to a slow count of four.
- Hold your breath for 4 seconds.
- Exhale slowly from your mouth for 4 seconds.
- Repeat the inhalations, holds, and exhalations until you feel re-centered.
You can repeat these steps as many times as you need to feel more relaxed and in control and as often as needed throughout the day. Even just 30 seconds of box breathing can help you re-center your mind and lower your stress.
The Benefits of Box Breathing
Box breathing may be a simple deep breathing exercise to implement, but that does not make its benefits any less influential for your well-being.
Distract Your Mind
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed, box breathing can help you to distract your mind from the panic-producing situation. Once you’ve regained control of your thoughts, you can approach the problem with a calmer mind, which can help you to better control your response.
Additionally, if you’re having a stressful day, box breathing can help you refocus your mind, which can be especially useful before bed so that your thoughts from the day don’t haunt your night.
Control Hyperventilation
If your breathing is picking up speed because you’re in a stressful situation, box breathing, by forcing you to focus on and control your breathing, can help you to keep your breathing rate steady.
Make Better Decisions
A calm and clear mind is crucial for being able to take in all information and make a wise decision—if you’re stressed, you may make an unwise decision simply because the stress has altered your point of focus.
Box breathing helps to calm your mind, which can put you in a better headspace to make important decisions and consider all factors in the process, rather than letting stress dictate which seems most important.
Lower Cortisol
Cortisol, your body’s stress hormone, makes an appearance when your sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight mode) kicks on. However, if you’re constantly under stress, cortisol continues to be raised, which can have harmful effects on the body, such as high blood pressure, which is notably nicknamed “the silent killer” because of the detrimental effects it can have on your heart.
Knowing this, box breathing, as a form of deep breathing, can significantly preserve your health by lowering blood pressure and cortisol levels. In addition to keeping your heart happy, this can also help to improve your mood.
How Stress Influences Your Sleep
By reducing your stress levels, box breathing can also help you improve your sleep duration and quality.
Research into the connection between stress and sleep has found that stress can increase how long it takes you to fall asleep, decrease your sleep efficiency, and reduce the amount of REM and deep sleep that you get. Stress may also cause you to wake up during the night more.
With stressful thoughts known to steal all your focus, it’s easy to see how stress can make it harder to fall asleep—when you should be relaxing, you’re instead focusing on a stressful event, which then causes your breathing and heart rate to increase, the opposite of what needs to occur to sleep.
The rise in cortisol that accompanies stress can explain the other effects of stress. Namely, cortisol typically is highest in the morning, and this is because cortisol is a wakefulness hormone. As such, if you’re stressed and your cortisol levels are high during the middle of the night, your body may mistakenly think that it’s time to wake up, leading to poor sleep quality and more nighttime wakings.
Knowing these interferences of stress on your sleep, methods by which you can lower your stress levels, including through box breathing, can help you sleep better.
Tips for Box Breathing
If you’re interested in box breathing to help calm an anxious mind, try out these tips to lower your stress and sleep better:
- Start with cycles lasting 2 or 3 seconds if 4 is too much to start with.
- Find a comfortable position. If you’re doing box breathing before bed, curl up in your bed.
- Try it even when you’re not feeling stressed. While box breathing is most known for its ability to lower your stress levels, it can help you relax and prepare for bed even if you’re not feeling the effects of stress, so try adding it to your regular wind-down routine.
- Pair it with aromatherapy. Try using some sleep-supporting scents, such as lavender or jasmine, while doing your box breathing. With each inhale, you’ll breathe in scents that will further help calm your mind.
Box breathing is a great resource to have on hand whenever you feel your stress levels rise during the day—it allows you to regain control over your breathing, calm your mind, and take your focus away from whatever is causing you stress.
Box breathing, by lowering stress levels and relaxing your mind and body, can also help to improve your sleep quality. Try adding it to your regular nighttime routine and see the benefits that deep breathing can bring to your sleep
