Blog · Stress
The one-minute reset: why a longer out-breath helps
The simplest tool I teach, and the one people keep using long after our sessions have finished.
Blog · Stress
The simplest tool I teach, and the one people keep using long after our sessions have finished.
If I could only teach one thing, it would probably be this. It takes a minute, needs no equipment, and nobody around you will notice you doing it.
That is all there is to it. You can try it on the home page, where a circle paces the breath for you.
When you are stressed, breathing tends to get quick and high in the chest. Slowing it down, and especially lengthening the out-breath, is one of the most widely used ways to help the body shift out of that wound-up state. Many people notice their shoulders drop by the third or fourth breath.
It will not fix whatever is causing the stress. What it does is give you a pause — a gap between the thing happening and your reaction to it. And in that gap, you get to choose.
Try this: practise it once a day when you are already calm, for a week. It works far better in a difficult moment if it is already familiar.
In sessions, a reset like this is often the first step rather than the whole answer. Once you can steady yourself, we can look at what sets the stress off in the first place — and that is where NLP and hypnotherapy come in.
It is two in the morning and you are still editing something you said at lunch. Here is what is going on.
Most people are waiting to feel confident before they act. It usually works the other way round.
If you have promised yourself you will stop, more than once, the problem is probably not your willpower.
Book a free twenty-minute call. Tell me what is going on and I will tell you straight whether I can help.