117__transcript.txt

[dramatic music]
- Billions of people suffer from stress
and there are tools to combat
stress that involve things
like meditation, breath
work, good nutrition,
good social connections
and avoiding all bad things in life.
And while those are
powerful, the problem is,
they require that people step away
from the stress inducing activity.
By contrast, my lab and other laboratories
have been very interested
in developing tools that allow
us to push back on stress.
In other words, feel
more calm in real time,
meaning without having to disengage
from the stress inducing activity.
The best way that I am aware to do that
is called the physiological sigh.
A physiological sigh is
a pattern of breathing
that involves two inhales
followed by an extended exhale.
Physiological sighs were
discovered in the 1930s,
as a pattern of breathing
that people go into spontaneously
when they're in
claustrophobic environments
or in deep sleep, when there's a buildup
of a gas called carbon
dioxide in the blood stream.
Carbon dioxide triggers
the impulse to breathe.
There are neurons in the brain that know
when carbon dioxide levels
have gotten too high.
And when the levels get too high,
they trigger inhale and exhale,
or double inhale and exhale.
Now you can do physiological
sighs voluntarily,
anytime you're feeling too stressed
and you want to feel more calm.
You do it like this.
[breathing]
So it's a double inhale.
And typically, the first inhale
is longer than the second
but the second one is
still important to do.
And then a very long, extended exhale.
Typically, both inhales
are through the nose
and the exhale is through the mouth.
That's the most effective way
to do the physiological sigh.
However, you can't
breathe through your nose
or your mouth for whatever reason
do it all through your mouth
or all through your nose.
The second inhale is really important
because your lungs are not
just two big bags of air.
They're two big bags of air
with lots of little
sacks, millions of sacks.
And if you were to lay out those sacks,
their volume is as big as a tennis court.
And that allows both the
intake of more oxygen
but also the offload of carbon dioxide.
So when you do the double
inhale, it reinflates
any of these little
sacks that have collapsed
and in doing so, it allows you
to offload more carbon dioxide.
So if you're feeling
stressed in any circumstance,
inhale twice through the
nose and then exhale long
through the mouth, if you want,
you can repeat it a second
or even a third time, but
typically, just one or two,
maybe three physiological sighs
are sufficient to bring
your level of stress
and alertness down very fast
and allow you to feel more calm.