Mindful breathing helps control stress and put your mind in optimal state for performance
Summary
- Mindful breathing helps control stress
Details
- close eyes and breathe deeply into your lower half of your lungs, hold for a count of four, then breath out for four, then hold for four.
- Practised by Navy SEALs
References
Quotes
Lastly, I encourage you to spend one or two minutes doing some mindful breathing. There are a couple of techniques that I’m a big fan of. One is called ‘box breathing’: the idea is that you close your eyes and breathe into your diaphragm (into your stomach and not your chest) for a count of four (or three, or five, or whatever suits you), hold for a count of four, breathe out for four and hold for four. Repeat for four to eight cycles. U.S. Navy SEALs use this technique to control their arousal (stress) and put their brains into an optimal performance state. If you know anything about special forces soldiers, you’ll know that they don’t do ‘fluffy bullshit’, but they’re very keen to do things that give them a performance edge.