Cardiac (or heart) coherence
Close in style to meditation exercises done through breathing, it does away with any pretense at spirituality and sticks to what science knows. Roughly, inhalation is tied to the sympathetic system, which comes in play when action is needed, and exhalation is tied to the parasympathetic system, kicking in when activity comes down and rest is needed.
From here, you can use your breathing in any circumstances to regulate, recuperate, or energize your mood following a simple logic. If exhaling takes longer than inhaling, you will activate your parasympathetic system to calm yourself and vice-versa.
To start, pick your favorite position. Sitting, lying, standing, anything goes. Become conscious of your breath without modifying it for a minute.
Then, breathe according to the current need.
To calm yourself in a situation of stress or annoyance or as a daily ritual, inhale normally but exhale slowly, so that it takes twice as long for the air to get out as it takes to go in. If it’s hard on your lungs, you can inhale in three seconds and exhale in five. Do so for five minutes.
Phone applications handling the time for you are a great tool here.
To boost yourself, when feeling tired right before sports for example, inhale normally but expel the air out all at once. Test it right now for ten breaths and notice the immediate effect.
Calming and boosting have noticeable short-term effects. Cardiac coherence can also be used to regulate your mood long-term. Here, we want to breathe in and out for the same amount of time, say 5 seconds each. Unlike the previous two, effects takes longer to manifest, it's meant to help your mood become generally more stable and less susceptible to sudden changes.
Plenty of variations exist, for instance, an exercise will have you hold your breath 5 seconds between exhaling/inhaling. I'm less fond of holding my breath during practice, but as always I'm not you so test it out.
Last updated