Cyclic sighing, step by step
- Breathe in through your nose.
- At the top, take one more short breath in to fill your lungs.
- Breathe out slowly through your mouth, about twice as long as the two breaths in.
- Repeat for up to five minutes. Go at a pace that feels comfortable; the counts on the timer are a guide, not a rule.
It’s sometimes called the physiological sigh: the double breath in that your body takes on its own, like the shaky breath after a long cry. In a 2023 Stanford study, people who practiced five minutes of cyclic sighing a day reported a bigger lift in mood than people who spent the same five minutes on mindfulness meditation.
Box breathing, step by step
- Breathe in for a count of four.
- Hold for four.
- Breathe out for four.
- Hold for four, then start again.
Box breathing, also called square breathing, is easy to remember and easy to do anywhere, which is most of its charm. If the holds leave you short of breath, shorten them or switch to cyclic sighing.
Cyclic sighing vs box breathing: which one?
Try both and keep the one your body likes. Cyclic sighing puts the weight on the breath out, which many people find easier to settle into when their breathing feels high and fast. Box breathing gives a busy mind a steady count to hold on to. Neither is a test you can fail.
If your thoughts are still racing when the timer ends, try 5-4-3-2-1 grounding next.
After the moment passes
An exercise like this gets you through the moment. The pattern underneath is usually still there tomorrow: the same thought, the same time of night, the same person. Writing down the one sentence that started it is how you begin to see it.
That’s what Whisper Vault is for: a private journal that doesn’t feed the anxiety loop. You tag what you write, and when you want, you ask for one clear reading of the pattern underneath, in your own words.