Cyclic/Physiological Sighing Breathwork For Stress Relief

Cyclic sighing, or the physiological sigh is a natural breathing pattern that has the ability to calm and soothe the nervous system miraculously quickly. It is done by breathing in through the nose twice and out through the mouth and works by quickly offloading carbon dioxide from the body. In this meditation, I teach you how to do it and lead you through 3 minutes of it.

I have also uploaded another meditation called "Cyclic/Physiological Sighing For Stress Relief With Intro." If you'd like to learn more about cyclic sighing, I recommend listening to the other track, and then returning to this track if you want to do repeated practice. The other track contains a brief educational intro, whereas this one does not.

If you like this meditation, make sure to follow me on Insight Timer for more. I have uploaded many meditations and self-paced courses. Thank you, and enjoy!

Transcript

Hello this is Emma from Holistic Health with Emma. Today I will teach you cyclic sighing also known as the physiological sigh. The cyclic sigh or physiological sigh is a form of breathing that has been clinically proven to be very effective for reducing stress and anxiety. I will demonstrate first. You do it by breathing in through the nose and then in again through the nose and then sighing it out through the mouth as if you are trying to fog up a mirror. As you can tell the first inhale is longer than the second. Now we will practice cyclic sighing together for three minutes. If you feel like you've had enough before the three minutes have elapsed, Simply stop and return to your natural breathing pattern. Okay that was three minutes so you can return to your natural breath. Take a moment and see how you feel now. You can repeat this breathing exercise anytime you need to either on your own or by returning to this recording for guidance. This experience is now complete. Thank you.

Reviews

I have never tried this technique before—thank you for sharing!

Simple and powerful. I like this breathing exercise and hadn't heard of it before. I'll be using this again. Thank you!