Working Well: The simple act of taking deep breaths can reduce stress and anxiety

[November 15, 2024]  By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

NEW YORK (AP) — A simple, uncommon ritual starts each staff meeting at Myosin Marketing. When everyone is gathered on Zoom, and before they get to the meat of the agenda, CEO Sean Clayton leads his team through a deep-breathing exercise.

The practice sets the tone for the meeting, and helps his employees, most of whom work remotely, to feel safe, grounded and willing to take creative risks, he said.

“At first they thought it was really weird, like, ‘What are we doing?’” Clayton said. “There were a lot of cameras off and I’m sure a lot of people were like, ‘This is awkward.’" But after a couple of weeks, there was a shift. Employees of the Austin, Texas company were saying, 'This feels good,’” he said.

Deep breathing can be an effective way to reduce stress at work, studies show. But on the job, many people don’t think about how they’re inhaling and exhaling.

Desk workers sitting a computer tend to take shallow breaths as their shoulders creep up. Workers who spend the day on their feet in retail or health care may be too busy to focus on breathing.

But there's good reason to remember to pause to take deep breaths. Chronic, unmanaged stress, which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, can be as harmful to our health as secondhand smoke, according to the American Heart Association. Research suggests deep-breathing exercises can lower a person's blood pressure and reduce anxiety.

Other benefits: deep breathing is free, can be done anywhere and doesn't require taking a half-hour to meditate. Spending just a minute or two breathing deeply can help calm racing thoughts, experts say.

“It relaxes my mind. It makes my mind so full of ease,” Lisa Marie Deleveaux, a marketing professional and mother of five, said. “It brings you back to the present moment.”

Deleveaux was laid off several months ago and has struggled to find a new job. She wakes most mornings at 4 or 5 a.m., before the children, to do breathing exercises. One is a technique known as alternate nostril breathing, a yoga exercise that involves inhaling through one nostril and out through another, using a thumb or forefinger to hold one nostril closed at a time.

“If you set a priority for yourself ... you can make the time,” Deleveaux said.

Focusing on breathing for one to five minutes "can help you clear the slate and wipe all these things out of your mind...and allow you to get back to focusing on the one thing you want to accomplish,” said cardiologist Glenn Levine, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “The best analogy is turning your computer off when you have 37 programs (open) and it freezes.”

A good way to do deep breathing exercises is while sitting on a bench outside, Levine said. If that’s not an option, doing it at a desk works.

(AP Illustration/Annie Ng)

“Either turn off your screen or just put something blank on the screen so people think you’re still working," Levine said. “Instead of focusing on the screen or work, just focus on your breathing. If possible, close your eyes.”

There are other ways to fit in breathing exercises. To get ahead of anxiety before starting a day of cold calls, sales development representative Lindsay Carlisle does breathing exercises with her 7-year-old daughter during the drive to school. They breathe in for seven counts, hold their breath for five, breathe out for seven counts, and then repeat the cycle several times.

“Throughout that process, my shoulders start to drop on their own, and it really is calming,” Carlisle, who lives in Flint, Michigan, said. “I’m not a yoga instructor. I don’t know what I’m doing, but it works.”

Suze Yalof Schwartz was an overworked fashion editor when her mother-in-law taught her a three-minute meditation technique that she says changed her life. She gave up her fashion career and founded Unplug Meditation, a Santa Monica, California, company with a meditation studio, an app and programs for corporate clients.

“When we slow down our breath, we send a signal to our brain that everything’s OK, even when it’s not," she said.

A 16-second breathing technique she's taught to firefighters, police officers, doctors and others is called the box breathing technique. You breathe in for four counts, hold for four, breathe out for four counts and hold for four.

“It is the best thing that you can do at work before you have a meeting, before you send out an email that you wish you didn’t send, before you have a difficult conversation, because it just calms you down, gets rid of your negative energy," Yalof Schwartz said.

Employers such as Coca-Cola, Mattel and Netflix have hired Unplug Meditation to teach breathing or meditation.

It's not always easy for workers to find space for deep breathing exercises. For example, in retail jobs, workers often mix with customers. Yalof Schwartz recommends doing breathing exercises when ringing up a sale or folding clothes. You can also take a deep breath right before walking through a door.

Office workers can set a timer on their phones to remind themselves to breathe deeply. That's what Carlisle, the sales representative, does. She also keeps a Post-it note on her monitor that says “Breathe.”

“The anxiety is always going to be there,” Carlisle said. “But at least I know I have one small tool. ... It sounds so simple and silly, but it works.”

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