It’s important to take a moment to pause and take a long, slow exhale as we navigate life. In our podcast series, "Breathe Away Anxiety," we explore ancient breathing techniques alongside cutting-edge research that reveals the powerful effects of slow, controlled breathing on our mental and physical well-being. We also share Happiness Break meditations to guide you through these science-backed methods, helping you reduce anxiety and cultivate calm in your everyday life.
As part of our series, we explore cyclic sighing, a simple breathing technique that can help lift your mood and lower anxiety.
Summary: Cyclic sighing is a breathing exercise that involves inhaling through your nose, filling your lungs, and then slowly exhaling through your mouth. The idea is to inhale briefly but deeply, and then exhale for longer. Research suggests that the slow exhale is what's most relaxing. We hear from pro-surfer Sarah Gerhardt about and Stanford scientist David Spiegel.
Time: 5 minutes
Prepare:
Find a comfortable seated or standing position in a quiet environment. Relax your shoulders and jaw.
First Inhale:
Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose. Start with your abdomen, allowing it to expand (diaphragmatic breathing) as you fill your lungs about halfway. Hold this breath briefly.
Second Inhale:
Continue inhaling through your nose, now expanding your chest to completely fill your lungs. Hold this combined breath (abdomen and chest filled) for a moment.
Exhale:
Exhale slowly and completely through your mouth. Make sure the exhale is gentle and lasts about twice as long as the combined inhales.
Repeat the Cycle:
Repeat the inhale sequence for a total of 3 cycles (or as desired). Start with a diaphragmatic inhale through your nose, expanding your abdomen. Follow with a chest expansion inhale through your nose to fill your lungs completely. Hold briefly after each combined inhale. Exhale slowly and completely through your mouth, ensuring it's twice as long as the inhales.
Reflect and Relax:
After completing the cycles, take a moment to observe how your body feels. Notice any sensations of relaxation, reduced tension, or a calmer state of mind.
Guest: Sarah Gerhardt is a pro-surfer and chemistry professor based out of Santa Cruz, California
Guest: Dr. David Spiegel is Willson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the co-founder of the clinically backed self-hypnosis app Reveri.
Read Dr. Spiegel’s cyclic sighing study here: https://tinyurl.com/mrxbkyr2
Related Science of Happiness episodes:
How To Tune Out The Noise: https://tinyurl.com/4hhekjuh
Related Happiness Break episodes:
A Mindful Breath Meditation, With Dacher Keltner: https://tinyurl.com/mr9d22kr
Transcript
SARAH GERHARDT I started out growing up on the beaches, in part in Hawaii, and being left to myself to figure out how to get out of the water and I survived. So that's good.
When I wanted to start surfing bigger waves, I did encounter the problem of not being able to hold my breath. And of getting almost to that panic state.
So it was really important to do breath hold training. So I needed to train my body to not freak out, to not go into that. Like, if you hold your breath for a long time your hands can start to tingle. You know, your vision starts to get you know, kind of black from the outside. There can be a lot of anxiety, you know, like we have a natural response to breathe when our CO2 levels get high, but that's trainable. So I can train myself to be comfortable in the chaos and the discomfort.
But I realized that I have a lot of breathing practices for movement. So I have breathing practices when I swim. I have breathing practices before I go surf big waves. I just didn't have a practice for, "I'm late for an appointment and I'm in my car in the traffic." Or I didn't have a practice for like when I'm sitting here and I'm nervous talking to you. So I have all these amazing breath work practices that are really important for the things that I like to do physically, I'd like to incorporate practices for just sitting here
DACHER KELTNER Welcome to the Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. This week is our first episode in a series on science back ways to breath away anxiety. We're starting with a controlled breathing technique called cyclic sighing.
It's a simple and powerful way to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. And it's quite different from the type of breathing our guest today, professional surfer Sarah Gerhardt, is accustomed to.
Sarah is the first woman to surf the Mavericks waves in Northern California, where swell reach up to 60 feet. When she's not navigating th water, she's a chemistry professor in Santa Cruz.
While Sarah finds calm in the ocean, life on land can often stress her out. So for our show, Sarah tried out cyclic sighing for a few weeks to help her relax.
We hear from Sarah, and also from David Spiegel, the Stanford scientist who helped discover the benefits of doing this practice for 5 minutes a day.DAVID SPIEGEL We were trying to see whether people, by just practicing a brief, daily breathwork exercise, could demonstrate some significant improvement in mood, and physical arousal and tension.
DACHER KELTNER How and why to try cyclic sighing, after these messages from our sponsors.
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DACHER KELTNER Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I'm Dacher Keltner. This week is all about the science behind a controlled breathing technique called cyclic sighing.
With me now is professional surfer Sarah Gerhardt to her talk about experience with cyclic sighing. Sarah, thanks for being on the show.
SARAH GERHARDT It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
DACHER KELTNER I want to ask you about your surfing life. You've been surfing since you were 13 and made a professional career out of surfing large waves. What drew you to large waves? Why that specialization?
SARAH GERHARDT I'm very curious and probably hyperactive. So when I was a kid, I just wanted to be further out, further out, further out. It's kind of like the mountain climbers, you know, they look at those mountains and they go, "What's up there? I wonder what's up there?" Part of it was a curiosity about myself and what I could handle. Part of it was the intensity of the situation really helped to kind of calm all the noise that was going on inside and the circumstances on the beach. So I could just leave everything behind and the bigger it was, the more intense the focus and the more thrilling it was.
DACHER KELTNER So we had you try out this controlled breathing exercise called cyclic sighing, which was studied by Andrew Huberman and David Spiegel at Stanford. And David will come by on the show and talk about this later in the episode, but can you share with us and just kind of walk me through how to do cyclic sighing. The steps and how you do it.
SARAH GERHARDT The first step for me, that was so important was the acknowledgment of my body and just the awareness of, "Oh, my shoulders are in my ears," and "I am, I'm not breathing." Like instantly relaxing my shoulders and becoming aware made me calmer.
And then the step of breathing in. So you breathe into the belly first and I don't do that normally so I had to breathe into my belly first and I had to figure out how that worked and then a little hold and then fill up the rest of the way to the top of my lungs. and then let it out with sigh.
DACHER KELTNER You know, my lab has studied, I guess you would call them sighs, you know, just little vocalizations. And I think one of the under-appreciated parts of this practice is to get people to vocalize emotion. We make sides that sound like relief. "Ah" You know, and sympathy. Oh, you know, Marge Simpson's frustrated, sigh, "Hrgh." You know, what are your sides sound like, do you think?
SARAH GERHARDT I think they sound a little bit like relief.
DACHER KELTNER Yeah
SARAH GERHARDT "Ahh"
DACHER KELTNER Can I hear it again?
SARAH GERHARDT "Ahh"
DACHER KELTNER Yeah, it's relief and contentment and we need them. Walk us through one of your cyclic signing sessions where you were, and you know, why you picked that moment to do it, and what it was like.
SARAH GERHARDT Kind of the first big cyclic sign thing I did, I had a flight to visit -- my niece was getting married. And my daughter and I left Santa Cruz at 4:15 in the morning to make our flight and we got to the airport and our flight was canceled. And I was like, okay, I'm kind of freaking out here.
You know, we had to wait six hours to get on a flight and then I had to get around a car and drive and get on a ferry and it was a little stressful.
DACHER KELTNER Sounds a little safer than a big wave, but go ahead.
SARAH GERHARDT You know, I'm on land. It put me in the water and I'm a much calmer, happier, safer person. Um, so…
Fortunately the airport was mostly empty and hardly anyone else at the gate. And so I just said, I'm just going to sit down here and I'm gonna do my sighing. And, it was really, really helpful. Yeah, I'll definitely use it again.
DACHER KELTNER 22:38 What other did you find that, that you were relying on this or implement or starting to build this into your life? Was it moments of anxiety or, what were the contexts of that you've started to build this?
SARAH GERHARDT So I just turned 50, and so I'm like doing all the exam stuff. You know, going to the doctor, getting everything checked out, and I'm like, oh god, this is my least kind of favorite type of exam. And so I am going to do cyclic sign on the way, while I'm driving, and then that's it. Before the appointment. And so I get into the doctor's office and the medical assistant's like, Okay, we're gonna check your blood pressure. And I'm like, Yeah, you know, it's usually around 110 over 60. And she goes, "Oh, it's 96 over 56." I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I haven't been under like 110 over 60 in a really long time." And I knew at that point, That the things I was feeling like being relaxed and not being as anxious for let me tell you a very anxiety-provoking experience that I was just about to have, that was amazing to me, like actually seeing the numbers. So that was a real case scenario.
And then another of my least favorite kinds of appointments would be the dental hygienist. I really don't like getting my plaque scraped off my teeth. I just don't like it.You know, I'm just, Oh, so I decided to try it. And I just let my hygienist know, like, "I'm doing some breathing techniques right now." You know, and then I had to rinse and spit and, you know, I'm going to do it a little bit more and then she laid me back in the seat. I was, I felt a lot calmer through that.
DACHER KELTNER Such terrific wisdom because it's, you know, you're using your sense of your body and the context and like, Oh, I'm feeling overwhelmed here. That's a cue, right? Let's go to cyclic sighing?
DACHER KELTNER How long have you been trying cyclic sighing? How long have you been working on it?
SARAH GERHARDT So a couple months, two and a half months ago, I started. And then I really started in earnest probably just about a month ago.'Cause I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to practice it when I'm in this stressful situation, like at the airport or like, trying to get on the ferry or like whatever. "
SARAH GERHARDT And then I realized, "Wait a minute, I can practice it all the time." Like, when I'm bored or overwhelmed or just, you know, whatever situation arises, I can practice cyclic sighing. So, it really picked up the pace once I started seeing the benefits of it.
I actually tend to be quite an anxious person and I think I came in the world that way. So, anxiety builds up during the day and and so does distraction. You know, after an hour on the computer and I'm multitasking as I'm trying to do, emailing students and emailing other faculty. I'm department chair right now and I'm getting presentations ready and I just start kind of freaking out. So it's not just like, "Oh, super stressful situation." It's like, "I'm just overloaded right now and I need to calm down and I need to focus because I have another couple hours of the stuff to do and I'd rather go surfing, honestly."
You know what it feels like to just be foggy headed and just kind of overwhelmed and like, "What's my next step? I know I have this list of 10 things I have to get done today. I have lost the ability to prioritize and focus right now, and I just want to grab a bag of chips and eat it. I'm stressed out, but I can't put my finger on it.
So I need to focus. And I'm going to calm myself down." So I've done that and that's been helpful, you know, taking that break to step away from what I'm doing, that I'm finding overwhelming or just boring or whatever. And I'm just anxious, you know.
So when I first was starting to practice of the cyclic sighing this and I wanted to do it, not just under really stressful situations, I set a timer and my timer got off an hour later and I'm like, "Oh, what's the timer for? Oh yeah, I'm going to breathe right now."
Those are the shifts. Those are important shifts, you know, like these simple little things that, that have really important consequences and shifts towards a positive, more productive, calmer life. So that is the benefit to me of incorporating cyclic sighing. Yeah.
DACHER KELTNER Other thoughts on, the context in your life where you really started, have built this into your practice?
SARAH GERHARDT It really doesn't take much. It's like, what is it? Six breaths. And I'm like, Oh, I feel calmer. You know, and sometimes it is interesting, I notice that I have to focus on it, and I think that that may be one of the aspects of why it's calming, because I'm shifting my focus away from whatever chaos is around me, or whatever I'm perceiving to be chaotic, and I'm moving to this other practice, and it's not like I'm doing it for an hour, I'm just doing it for like six, maybe eight breaths, and all of a sudden I realize I'm not counting anymore. And I'm breathing deeper. I'm like, "Okay, I'm ready to move on." It's kind of nice, you know.
DACHER KELTNER Yeah, yeah. I hear you. I'm curious, like when you think about all the practices you've done, this breathing and then the cyclic sign give to you that's unique perhaps?
SARAH GERHARDT I think something that's unique about this is that it gives me a practice when I'm not in movement. It's something that I do when I'm not moving. Yoga is in movement, vinyasa flow, right? Or surfing's in movement or mountain biking, I'm in movement. And I don't have to think about breathing when I'm mountain biking, going up a hill, I am sucking air, I have to breathe, you know, so I have these physical practices that the breathing comes with it. But what do I do when I'm sitting here and I'm anxious? Or I'm in the car, or I'm in the line at the grocery store. What do I do when I'm bored in my office and I'm just, "Agh, I'm tired of doing what I'm doing?" Well, I can easily refocus and reshift my response, my emotional response, or my physical response to the circumstances just by doing this practice. Then I'm sleeping better. Then I'm living better, I'm living from a centered, calmer space. And let me just reiterate, that is not my natural state. And I think it's really powerful, and I'm really excited to practice it and to continue to practice it.
DACHER KELTNER Thank you so much, it's been a wonderful interview.
SARAH GERHARDT 35:54 Well, thank you for having me and introducing me to a very, very valuable practice that I'll use the rest of my life.
DACHER KELTNER Hey everyone. Next, we’ll hear from Dr. David Spiegel, who worked with Andrew Huberman from the Huberman Lab podcast to test how different breathing techniques like cyclic sighing, and mindful meditation, impact our mood and breathing rates.
DAVID SPIEGEL we tend to over breathe, not breathe deeply enough and breathe too rapidly. So, typically it's 10 to 12 a minute for people, uh, when it ought to be more like 6. And you breathe more efficiently and more relaxingly if you take longer, slower breaths.
DACHER KELTNER Dr. Spiegel will also guide us in short cyclic sighing practice on next week's Happiness Break episode. Tune in then -- and you can try it out even earlier: We have a step by step guide in our show notes. More on the science of cyclic sighing, up next.
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DAVID SPIEGEL It's right at the edge of conscious and unconscious activity. So by and large, heart rate, blood pressure, gastric function and all that are pretty much unconscious activities. Breath is right in the middle. So if you don't pay any attention to it, you will continue breathing. We hope. But if you do, you can control it very easily.
DACHER KELTNER That’s Dr. David Spiegel, the Stanford psychologist who studied this technique. Shuka Kalantari spoke with him about his experiment, which measured the effects of cyclic sighing against other breathing methods and mindful meditation, to see which ones make us feel better.
SHUKA KALANTARI You have been a member of the academic faculty Stanford school of medicine since 1975, which is quite impressive. And I'm just curious, in all your years of research, what brought you to studying the connection between our breath in our bodies?
DAVID SPIEGEL Well have been studying mind brain body interactions my entire career. And so I've been interested in other ways in which the brain and the body interact that can help people live better.
One of the things that I've learned is that it helps in handling stress to work from the body up rather than the brain down. That is, rather than having to figure out why you are the way you are, just do something that makes your body feel better and you can handle stress better.
We did a randomized clinical trial in which we compared three kinds of breath work, with a kind of brief meditation control condition to see what happened. And we had people practice just five minutes a day doing either cyclic sighing, box breathing, or cyclic hyperventilation, in comparison to the meditation. And what we found was very interesting that with just five minutes a day for a month of practice, the people, particularly with cyclic sighing, had reduced average respiratory rate. Just doing five minutes a day of cyclic sighing improved their mood as well. And so we realized that a very brief intervention, just practiced regularly for a month, could have substantial effects.
DAVID SPIEGEL We can try it if you'd like.
SHUKA KALANTARI That would be awesome.
DACHER KELTNER Here we go. So just take, take a note of just how kind of wound up tense you feel right now. Can you rate it on a zero to 10 scale?
SHUKA KALANTARI I'm always like a five up…
DACHER KELTNER Five up. Okay, Shuka.
SHUKA KALANTARI …kind of girl.
DAVID SPIEGEL So, just get as comfortable as you can. And I'm going to ask inhale through your nose. And I want you to start with your abdomen. So diaphragmatic inhale, push out your belly to inhale till your lungs feel somewhat comfortably full. And then stop. And now use your chest to fill your lungs completely again through your nose.
And now slowly exhale through your mouth.
Through your mouth. Slow exhale. The exhale should take about twice as long as the two inhales did.
Now again, inhale through your nose, starting with your belly. Hold. Now expand your chest and fill your lungs completely through your nose. And a nice slow exhale through your mouth. Very slow.
How are you feeling?
SHUKA KALANTARI Much more relaxed.
DAVID SPIEGEL Are you?
SHUKA KALANTARI Yeah.
DAVID SPIEGEL Great. How would you rate it on the 0 to 10 scale now?
SHUKA KALANTARI I'm like below a five now, a little bit. You know it's really just amazing the amount of tension that we can hold in our bodies continuously. Speaking of the body, what's happening physiologically during these inhales and exhales?
DAVID SPIEGEL We all tend to breathe too fast. A good average breath rate is about six a minute. So every 10 seconds go through a full breath cycle. And the secret to cyclic sighing in particular is that long, slow exhale. We tend to say when you want somebody to calm down, you say, "Take a deep breath." It's actually not the trick. It's not a good idea because what you do to take a deep breath is you create a vacuum in your chest cavity that sucks in air from outside. And that has the effect of reducing blood flow to the heart. So the sinoatrial node in the heart said, "Wait a minute. Decrease blood flow, we better increase heart rate to maintain full circulation of blood in the body." So it triggers increase heart rate and blood pressure.
And what you do when you exhale slowly, is you increase pressure in the chest. That's what forces air out into the world around you. And that increases blood flow to the heart. And so then the sinoatrial node thinks, "Well, okay, plenty of blood coming in. We can slow down heart rate." And that's a major trigger of parasympathetic activity. It's the rest and digest mode. And the ability to maintain it, is a major regulator of heart rate variability, which you need to go to sleep, which you need to just rest and relax and rest and digest. And so cyclic sighing in particular triggers this kind of parasympathetic response.
SHUKA KALANTARI Why do you think the breath work, particularly cyclic sighing, but all the three different kinds of breath work overall had more of an effect on people's well being and happiness than meditation? I found that really fascinating.
DAVID SPIEGEL Well, I would say in some ways, it's a little unfair to meditation in that the typical meditation practice is more like half an hour. It's not like the five minutes we did there. But we needed a reasonable control that people use and benefit from. But I also do think from my work in hypnosis, that we have much more ability to control what's happening in our body than we give ourselves credit for. With these briefer techniques, like breath work, you can very quickly change what's going on in your body. So, we can do things to regulate the way our bodies feel and the way we feel psychologically a lot more quickly than we give ourselves credit for.
SHUKA KALANTARI What would you say to people out there who maybe have some trepidation, you know, kind of like a fear of going to the body?
DAVID SPIEGEL I would say, the way we live our lives ordinarily is a little bit like driving our car, but not having your hands on the steering wheel all the time. There are ways in which we can help our bodies help us live our lives more effectively and better. And we're used to the idea of physical exercise, but somehow we don't see ourselves as needing to train our minds to help us live better too.
And yet if you try, you know, all I'd say is, "If you try it you'll like it." You know, it's one of these things where the minute you can see how you make your body feel more comfortable and relaxed, stressors become less threatening because you know you can regulate your body's response to them. You're having trouble getting to sleep, I find cyclic sign is very helpful. And this is not a huge commitment of time and energy. You know, you can do something in five minutes or less that make your body feel better. We don't think we can do that most of the time, but we can. Our brains learn over time to address certain situations in ways that have worked before. Neurons that fire together, wire together. And we know now that the brain is constantly reprogramming itself. And so if you handle stress better over time, it'll become more and more automatic, like learning to ride a bicycle. You know, you got to think about it a lot and practice it at first, and then you just do it instinctively because your brain has learned how to do it.
So I would say to people, it's not a huge commitment of time and energy, but the rewards are great.
SHUKA KALANTARI Well, Dr. Spiegel, thank you so much for joining us on The Science of Happiness to talk about your work in cyclic sighing. I think I'm definitely gonna try it out.
DAVID SPIEGEL Yeah. Good. Well, I hope, I hope you will. And, you're welcome.
DACHER KELTNER Next week Dr. Spiegel will be guiding us in a cyclic sighing session for our Happiness Break.
Our next episode of The Science of Happiness continues to explore research-backed ways to breathe away anxiety. This time with a technique that's thousands of year old and originated in India. And instead of sighing when you exhale, you kind of buzz it out, like a bee.
[Humming sounds]
GUNJAN TRIVEDI Humming has very profound benefits across multiple systems, whether it's heart signals, nervous system, heart to brain communication, calming the overall hormonal balance through calming the stress axis.
DACHER KELTNER It's called Bhramari Pranayama, also known as humming bee breath.
Thank you for joining us today in this Science of Happiness breathing journey. Our research assistants are Dasha Zerboni and Selina Bilal. Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Our executive producer is Shuka Kalantari. I'm Dacher Keltner. Have a great day.
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