PODCASTBreathe Away Anxiety: The Science of Happiness

Dr. David Spiegel guides you through cyclic sighing, a breath work practice that helps reduce stress and anxiety. 

Summary: Dr. David Spiegel guides you through a simple yet powerful breath work practice that can help reduce stress, anxiety, and boost overall well-being. Backed by Stanford research, this simple technique uses slow, controlled exhales to calm the nervous system and improve overall well-being.

Transcript below.

Time: 5 minutes

1. Prepare: Find a comfortable seated or standing position in a quiet environment. Relax your shoulders and jaw. 
2. 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. 
3. 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. 
4. Exhale: Exhale slowly and completely through your mouth. Make sure the exhale is gentle and lasts about twice as long as the combined inhales. 
5. 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. 
6. 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: 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:
Breathe Away Anxiety (Cyclic Sighing): https://tinyurl.com/3u7vsrr5
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

DACHER KELNTER Hi, I’m Dacher Keltner, and welcome to Happiness Break, where we explore practices that can bring more joy and peace to your day. 

The concept of using breath to regulate the nervous system is a well-established principle in many traditional Eastern practices, including those found in Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese traditions.

This week we're trying a breathing technique that incorporates a lot of those time-honored principles—cyclic sighing. 

Cyclic sighing involves inhaling deeply through your nose, filling your lungs, and then exhaling slowly through your mouth. This slow, extended exhale is what makes cyclic sighing so relaxing. 

Today, we’re guided by Dr. David Spiegel, the director of the Center on Stress and Health at Stanford University. His research suggests that cyclic sighing lowers your breathing rate, which can help reduce stress and anxiety by calming the nervous system and improving blood flow to the brain.

Now, let’s dive into a short cyclic sighing practice led by Dr. Spiegel. Take a moment to settle in, and let’s find some calm together.

DAVID SPIEGEL Breathing is an intrinsic part of living. But it's an unusual mind-body phenomenon because the way we breathe is right at the edge of conscious and unconscious processing. We obviously can control how we breathe. We can decide to inhale and exhale and how often to do it. And yet most of the time we do it automatically. So the way breathing is controlled in the brain, where it is controlled is right in the medulla between the mind and the spinal cord and body. And it's a way in which the brain can regulate its own level of arousal by changing the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood. 

And it's an opportunity for us to learn to better manage our level of arousal, stress, anxiety, and comfort. And it's  a way of very quickly, surprisingly quickly, helping you to regulate your rate of breathing, and actually your emotion. Your anxiety and arousal, as well as a sense of calmness.  

So just take note of how your body is feeling right now. The tension in your muscles, the relative comfort in your legs and your chest.  And now let's try a breathing exercise and see how you feel as you do it. 

So I'm going to ask you to do a series of inhales through your nose. Inhale through your nose, starting with your abdomen. So, a diaphragmatic inhale part way, So push out your belly,  inhale through your nose, and then stop. And now complete the inhale by expanding your chest, so that you fill your lungs all the way through your nose. And now very slowly exhale through your mouth. 

Again, inhale through your nose, starting with your belly. Hold. Now fill your lungs completely by expanding your chest. And a nice slow exhale through your mouth. You want the exhale to take about twice as long as the two inhales. 

Again, inhale through your nose, starting with your abdomen. Hold. Now fill your lungs completely by expanding your chest.  And a nice, slow exhale through your mouth. 

And as you do this, notice how your body is feeling.  See if your legs and your  chest feel more comfortable, feel different.  

Again, inhale through your nose. Hold. Fill your lungs completely through your nose and slow exhale through your mouth. 

Inhale through your nose, expanding your belly. Now expand your chest, and then a nice slow exhale through your mouth. See if you don't have a sense of floating and comfort in your body. 

Inhale through your nose. Hold. Fill your lungs. Slow exhale through your mouth. And notice how the sense of calm and relaxation you feel comes not so much from taking a deep breath, but from the nice, slow exhale.

Inhale again, through your nose, expanding your belly. Hold. Expand your chest, lungs full. And a slow exhale through your mouth.

Again, inhale through your nose, expanding your belly, hold. Fill your chest and slow, slow exhale through your mouth. 

Notice how quickly and easily you can use your imagination, your ability  to manage your breathing,  to maximize your ability to  inhale fairly rapidly,  and then emphasize the slow exhale through your mouth. 

It's called cyclic sighing because we emphasize the sigh. The sigh is a sigh of acceptance. So rather than struggling with things, fighting with them, you just inhale. Hold. Fill your lungs, and slow exhale.  

Think of it as being not so different from singing. We find it enjoying because you do a rapid inhale and do that again through your belly. 

Hold. Now fill your lungs and then slow the exhale the way you would if you were singing. Through your mouth. Slower exhale than the inhale. And again. Inhale through your nose. Hold. Fill your lungs, and one more nice, slow exhale. 

Take a moment to reflect on how quickly and easily you've been able to soothe your body and improve your mood. 

Thanks for sighing along with me.