Calming Your Brain Through Breathwork

Racing thoughts. Over thinking. Perseveration. These are all challenging states of mind that arise from thinking too much. This is important to recognize and acknowledge, but how do you go about thinking less?

There are many practices, like martial arts, yoga, and meditation, that can help bring about this state of mind. These skills take time to acquire but are very effective. But what if you are looking for a quick brain hack right now?

Slow and steady breathing is key to calming.

Slowing your thinking and calming your mind is, of course, the ultimate objective of many mindful practices, meditation being the most obvious example. But this can be challenging for many, especially early on in a new journey. When you are trying to change your thinking by using thinking itself, it’s a bit like having an itch and trying to get your skin to scratch itself. There’s an embedded and intimate relationship between the thing you are trying to change (your thoughts), the thing doing the thinking (you in your mind), and the substrate you want to change (which brings us back to your thoughts).

One way to help yourself out is to try and think slowly. And this relies on the blanketing effect that sensory feedback from body movement can have on brain activity.

Hack your brain by breathing in and breathing out.

So here’s a brain hack to try and help get you to the next level. While we cannot directly and reliably regulate our brain activity until we’ve had lots of practice (hi mindfulness), we can directly control the other parts of our bodies outside of our brain. We can control our movements and our breathing.

People are animals, too, and a big part of being an animal in the world is to move around. And that moving around requires oxygen for all our cells and a way to get rid of carbon dioxide from respiration. So moving and breathing are fundamental features of being a living animal in the world.

Inhaling through the nose is key to calming.

A key thing to do is to let go of attempts to control things that we can't directly influence and slow down the stuff we can control. Regulating our breath is key to this calming. Slow your movements, don’t rush, and breathe in through your nose. You can breathe out through your mouth if you want, but it's critical to inhale through your nose. Slow each breath, and hold each one briefly during inhalation and exhalation. All of these efforts provide regular and rhythmic somatosensory signals to your brain, which can help entrain a calming of your mind.

In this way of thinking (or maybe non-thinking is a better way to put it), your breath becomes like a rake, bringing order from chaos in the Zen garden of your mind. It really does work, and simple steps can be taken right now. As a human animal, you are endowed with a great big brain, but that doesn't mean you have to let it push you around. Just try a breath or three with these ideas in mind. Then give some thought to pursuing long-term mindful practices in your daily life.

(c) E. Paul Zehr (2022)