How to try box breathing

Your breathing can impact your thoughts, feelings, and overall health. This might sound like a slight exaggeration, but it’s not! Your breathing rate can determine how anxious or relaxed you feel, and vice versa.

Box breathing is one technique that can help reduce your breathing rate to a normal level if you are feeling anxious and worried. It can help to clear your mind, improve your concentration and relax your body.

How to do box breathing

To perform box breathing, you need to imagine you’re breathing in line with a square. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, and hold for four seconds. As you perform each stage of this process, imagine you’re drawing the outline of a square. Each stage of box breathing lasts for the same length of time, so it creates a square with four identical sides.

Make sure that you are sitting comfortably in a quiet location when you want to try box breathing. The idea is to fully calm your nervous system down, and this becomes easier if you are in a space and position where you can relax. To get the best effects from box breathing, repeat this process for a total of 3 to 4 times.

Box breathing is so easy to do, which means you can try it at any time of the day when you are feeling anxious or overwhelmed.

Benefits of box breathing

Here is a summary of some box breathing benefits:

• Lower psychological stress
• Improved concentration and focus
• Relaxed body and mind
• Better mood
• Increased resilience to stress