Dear Reader, thank you for sticking through the year 2025. We are almost heading towards 2026, but I thought an important thing that I want to tell you about was breathing exercises. Just like how we exercise our body, our mind needs to be exercised as well. While reading is one exercise for the mind. Writing is other. Breathing is the third one. Without wasting too much time, let's dive right in.
Box breathing: 4-4-4-4 (Morning)
This is an exercise where you inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, then exhale for 4, then hold for 4. What this brings in you is tremendous amount of control over yourself and your body. I truly believe grounding yourself for such a period is a really difficult task, but when you really ground yourself, you start noticing the benefits. Now the question is that when you want to feel in control, that's where you do the exercise.
Slows breathing, stimulates the vagus nerve, lowers heart rate and blood pressure, and improves focus and emotional regulation.The equal phases plus the two holds create a very structured, “square” rhythm that feels stable and contained, which aligns well with a grounded, masculine presence
When you wake up this is the best practice that you can do, maybe right before the morning coffee. Let's go to the next one.
Equal breathing: 4-4 (Anytime)
This one is pretty simple, one is breath in for 4 seconds and breath out for 4 seconds. This can be done anywhere or everywhere through out the day. This helps you maintain the calm under dynamic situations where you cannot do box breathing. For example, you are at a meeting in work, you can calm your nervous system just by doing equal breathing. This slow down is really required for us to maintain the calm.
Perfect for maintaining a calm, even internal tempo while staying engaged with life, work, and relationships.
Balances rather than heavily sedates the system, which feels like quiet confidence instead of checked‑out relaxation.
This is what we get out here. It balances rather than heavily sedates(calms) the system, which feels like quiet confidence instead of checked-out relaxation. This is basically what you can do while going out for a walk as well. This is suggesting that one is unhurried and peaceful. Not excited or wild. So this is what we need to get when we are having equal breathing. I suggest that we should do this everyday, at any time. Even 5 minutes is a great start to begin with.
4-7-8 breathing technique: Before sleep
This exercise is something one can do before sleeping.
Use when you are overstimulated, can’t sleep, or need to come down after anger/anxiety; its strong parasympathetic activation is ideal for that.
Avoid overusing it before activities that require assertiveness or sharp presence, as it can tip you toward sleepiness or passivity.
Use this when you are over stimulated or need to calm down after anger or anxiety. Parasympathetic activation is ideal for that. Now what is parasympathetic ? The parasympathetic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that slows you down and helps your body rest, digest, and recover after stress.
While this also helps in grounding but the long exhales really calm your nervous system so much that you become a bit too passive. So one should really not overuse this. This is only used during night time. I suggest you focus on equal breathing more often than you focus on anything else.
I want to keep this blog short and simple, but I really wanted to tell you that you should be using equal breathing most of the day. Whether at work or whether playing a game. It makes you unhurried and makes you slow everything down. That's the most important thing out here.
I strongly believe that breathing really needs to slow everything down and bring life to perspective. Like these blogs are meant for quotes and expanding thoughts on quotes, it is best that we bring that in.
I talk a lot about the deep life on this blog. How one should not switch context for a period of one hour and practicing that consciously is quite an important thing. If someone switches context every 20 minutes, they need get trained for learning for 20 minutes taking the break, and then doing another 20 minutes, until those 20 minutes feel stable. Then you move to 30 minutes and so on. Progressively move to the next step. I really like that method of doing something for an hour personally, it was extremely difficult at first, but now I can do it. There are periods where I break that habit and it becomes difficult again, but then it needs one good hour to come back. But that come back hour will have it's own sort of resistance. The point here Elsie is making is that deep breathing brings deep thinking and shallow breathing brings shallow thinking. I love that quote. In fact if you think about it, deep breathing helps you slow down your nervous system, that slow down of your nervous system allows you to think deeply about a particular topic without changing that topic. I feel that's such an important thing to do in our real life. It's becoming increasingly rare these days to slow down and not be stimulated by external influences. YOU NEED TO BE BORED.
Deep breathing lengthens your internal time horizon: you feel less rushed inside, so you can stay with a thought or feeling long enough to see its layers, contradictions, and deeper meaning
Like we see out here, deep breathing will naturally help you feel less rushed. When you are less rushed, you will be able to see the nuances of things much more easily. You will feel less hurried and that lack of hurriedness is what produces the best result when it comes to deep thinking.
The "Space" Between Thoughts
Deep thinking requires cognitive flexibility, the ability to see a problem from multiple angles. Shallow breathing creates "mental rigidity" because the body feels under pressure.
When you breathe deeply, you lower your heart rate and reduce cortisol. This physiological "quiet" creates a space between a stimulus and your response. In that space, deep thinking, which requires patience and observation, can finally emerge.
Give your body permission to slow down
Too often we are always going after the next goal. The next big thing, the next promotion. Fine, it's all great. But you need to slow everything down. That slowing down begins with your breathe. The more deep you breathe, the more you are able to assess the situation and you are able to think critically in that situation. There's no question that the NAVY seals are taught box breathing because they need to think clearly especially under pressure. When you hold that breathe, what you are creating is a stimulated pressure environment. If you don't collapse in that environment, certainly you will be able to think clearly in the pressure environment created by life as well. For me one of the most meditative things to do is to write for an hour. Good bad ugly worst, whatever. But write for an hour. That's the idea. Read for 30 minutes, that's the idea. Sometimes when I read for 30 minutes, I really like the topic and I carry on for another 30 minutes. It helps me relax.
Conscious breathing heightens awareness and deepens relaxation. I love this quote by Mr. Dan. Conscious awareness is what is helping us a lot. So what I urge you in it's own practical ways are these tips:
Practical ways:
1. Set aside some time for breathing: Everyday. If you are doing box breathing, it's best that you do it in the morning. This will train your nervous system to be grounded.
2. Equal breathing during walks: When you go out on walks, or when you meet friends, try to do equal breathing. Focusing on your breath for 4 seconds in and 4 seconds out. This will relax you and calm you down. If you have social anxiety, I ask you to try this today itself.
3. 4-7-8 while sleeping: When you exhale for a longer period of time than inhale, it naturally calms your nervous system down for sleeping. I recommend that you do not use this during normal times. Just night time.
I won't keep this too long. Go ahead and practice breathing please.
Have a wonderful day ahead. Also thank you for reading the blog. I understand that my blog is not the perfect, but I still see consistent views throughout the year, which makes me proud that I bring value in your life.
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