Breathing 4-2-6-2
A breathing practice in my voice. You breathe in for four, hold for two, breathe out for six, and rest for two before the next breath. I count with you for the first few breaths, then guide you more lightly, then let you keep the rhythm on your own.
Breathing 4-2-6-2
Sit comfortably or lie down, one hand on your stomach and one on your chest.
Why it works
When you are anxious, your breathing speeds up as part of the fight-or-flight response. If it speeds up while you are sitting still, you breathe out more carbon dioxide than your body needs. That brings dizziness, light-headedness, tingling and a tight chest, which can feel like more danger, and the alarm grows. The Centre for Clinical Interventions in Perth, a Western Australian public mental health service, teaches exactly this slow pattern to retrain anxious breathing: in for four, hold for two, out for six, then a pause. A normal breathing rate is about 10 to 14 breaths a minute. At four, two, six, two you take just over four.
The long out-breath matters too. Your heart speeds up slightly with every in-breath and slows with every out-breath, so a longer out-breath means more of each minute in the slowing phase. In a study in Scientific Reports (Magnon, Dutheil and Vallet, 2021), 47 adults did one five-minute session breathing in for four and out for six. Their anxiety fell, and a heart rhythm measure linked to the vagus nerve rose. A systematic review in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Zaccaro and colleagues, 2018) brought together 15 studies of breathing at fewer than ten breaths a minute: slow breathing went with more relaxation and comfort, and less anxiety and arousal.
The single-session study had no control group, and the review looked at healthy adults, so the evidence supports slow breathing in general rather than this exact count.
When to use it
When your heart is racing, your breathing is high and fast in your chest, or you feel light-headed and shaky with anxiety. Before something you dread, at night when you cannot settle, or as a daily practice to bring your general level of tension down.
It is not the best tool when you feel numb, far away or switched off. Then something more active helps more, like pressing your palms into a wall.
How to practise it
- Sit comfortably or lie down. One hand on your stomach, one on your chest. As you breathe in, the hand on your stomach rises and the hand on your chest stays fairly still.
- Breathe through your nose if you can.
- In for four, hold for two, out for six, rest for two.
- If that feels like too much, start with in for three, hold for one, out for four.
- Practise once or twice a day when you are calm, for about five minutes. The rhythm needs to be familiar before you reach for it in an anxious moment.
- Light-headed? Make the breaths a little smaller, not bigger. Slow does not mean deep.