How to Reduce Work Stress and Anxiety With Simple Breathing Techniques

0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-theanine for both kiddos and grown-ups.

1:05So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Oli's sleep solutions for the whole family at oli.com. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance from a person, a place, an object, a thing of some description and we try to turn that curiosity into useful action for your career. And today our thing is breathing. I feel like we've gone back to basics. I'm so happy I've convinced you to do this episode. I think you must have been sceptical about us doing an episode on breathing.

1:50yes though I have read I know we're going to talk about full box breathing that particular kind of technique I have read a lot of evidence around you know that works uh for kind of high performing athletes um that it is actually really kind of good for you so actually I think less skepticism than the chairs episode I got some fun messages emails from people about the chairs episode yeah that wasn't my favorite episode so actually I think I was a bit more useful especially maybe this time of year okay yeah we did say in fact if you are watching on youtube you will note that we have this is our version of christmas this is our version of christmas which is because we are doing a team christmas day after us today which we'll write about in squiggly careers in action so if you are not subscribed to our newsletter subscribe to the newsletter uh because we'll tell you about some of the fun things we're doing in case um it's useful for your team to copy but yes we're dressed in our christmas best for the episode today um and it does feel like a good time of year to talk about breathing because we were we were laughing about like the last couple of weeks of the year where people are like oh we could just squeeze in just squeeze this in the meeting or just we just get this done before the end of the year and you're just like absolutely not like I have no more capacity well I think what's sort of it's a tricky one isn't it for people because I think everyone recognizes there's quite a lot of fun stuff so there's like fun I want to get together with friends and family maybe there are extra commitments that come your way if I don't know you've got kids you've got the nativity play sometimes you don't get loads of notice for some of those things I think lots of parents would kind of go you have that in common oh actually there's a carol service that everyone needs to go to next Thursday and you think yes well next Thursday I'm delivering a session or be back or whatever whatever it might be and so I think I also find there's a lot of like last there's more last minute rearranging in December than there is at any other point in the year you know we're just like new things coming your way whether that's demands from other people people you work with um wanting to catch up wanting to see people and I suppose you also have a bit of like an end of year mindset of like what needs to get done so that I can enjoy Christmas I think I have that in mind as well like well as long as all these pieces of the puzzle all fit together then at Christmas I can just stop it's a bit like the pre-holiday thing and so our premise really is that breathing is useful at any time of the year but it might be a particularly relevant skill to reflect and invest in right now and um the reason this all got started and i was like i think we should talk about breathing on the podcast is i randomly went to an event by this guy i've got his book here stewart sandman um i was at this place and he was doing a talk and i thought you know what i'm going to go down i've never really been to anything on breathing before i'm going to go down breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out as you saw reminder yeah that's what it says don't just do one of those but he a he has a fascinating squiggly career story like he was a dj and now he's like this breathing expert and had some like personal stuff um very very interesting and yeah now he has a radio one show i think but he shared in the presentation some facts about breathing and because they'd done a big experiment with um they have a business called breath pod and they did a big experiment about the impact of intentional breathing exercises on people's performance and there's some really interesting stats that he shared so when people did a conscious breathing practice of course we're all breathing but there are some breathing practices that are more beneficial and when people did that every day except for seven days stress and anxiety went down by 48 percent brain fog went down by 56 percent ability to switch off and relax increased by 54 percent and energy levels increased by 49 percent i think you're getting those kind of benefits i know i can see a little bit skepticism a little bit skepticism but if you are getting those numbers feel too big my energy has gone up by 50 i was like i well 49 increase in energy i'm I'm sort of like, how is that even possible?

5:36Wow. Like already bring quite a lot of energy to the work that I do. Imagine your energy increasing by 49%. That would be something to behold. I actually don't want to imagine that. I'm not sure that would actually be a good thing. A dangerous level of energy. Well, if people do want to test that, BreathPod has like a free seven-day, the experiment basically you can do for yourself. So if you wanted to kind of see what your energy and levels and brain fog reduction could be in reality, you could do it. and we'll put the link in the show notes if you want to try it out. But in this episode, we wanted to talk about some sort of practical ways that you can bring better breathing into your work.

6:13So as I have gone deeper into the world of breathing, I also read another book as well. If I'm halfway through this, I'm really enjoying it. This book is Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. Just lots of things I just didn't know about breathing. For example, breathing through your nose is much more beneficial than breathing through your mouth no that's interesting i feel like i have been taught through mainly through exercise to breathe in through your nose out through your mouth yeah i think it's the breathing in through your nose oh okay yeah that i have been taught yeah there's loads of science about why um but one of the things that stuck with me about why well the first was if you breathe with your mouth open at night this is nothing really connected to work i thought was interesting you um lose 40 percent more water so you're far less hydrated if you breathe that's why there's all those things you know where you can like stick your mouth together and my um partner does sometimes snort quite loudly so he's tried some of these like things but for that reason yeah um and some of them are really freaky i'm like as long as you don't look across it's absolutely fine you've got these like eye masks yeah yeah yeah um but you know anything to help medicine can help by performance and but the other thing was about this nose breathing was the difference in breathing through your left and right nostril which was an exercise that Stuart did when I was in that session he did this but I think I didn't you know the science behind it and so if you are breathing in through your left nostril I mean this is really embarrassing if you're watching on YouTube because I'm I'm now holding my nostril if you breathe it through your left nostril that is designed to kind of calm your system so if you're stressed or something yeah like holding your right nostril breathing in through your left one is more likely to calm it's somehow connected to like the parts of your brain or parasympathetic nerve system which is the old territory that i don't really understand but that's one thing whereas the right is more likely to energize you so you know if you're feeling like a bit like before a present tension like upbeat yeah you need to upbeat like and we'll talk about specifically the breathing exercises but the science of it is that that whether you're breathing through the left or right nostril has an impact on like how your body responds that is interesting I did do something the other week um where I was having a massage and I just thought it was going to be a normal massage but then the lady made me do some breathing first before I was like allowed to have the massage and I was like I don't want to do the breathing I just I want the massage um and what I find when I because I knew we were doing this podcast at that point so I was like oh well it's just more content I was like I actually when I first start doing any of these exercises we're going to talk about and I've tried a few of them and got some other ones as well um I get more stressed initially I definitely get more stress so note my breathing it gets like really shallow I get a bit like oh my god I can't breathe and so it just takes me a moment to be like actually breathe in a way that this is I sort of have to get past that first point I think partly because she was watching me breathe and I was like this that's weird I mean like it's weird to watch them I mean she was sort of doing it with me I think at one point I sort of clearly wasn't doing it right because then she sort of started like demoing it quite loudly I think she didn't believe she was like because she couldn't perhaps see me like breathing out in quite the way that she wanted me to she was like let it go Sarah like breathe out I was like I'm breathing out I was like is this having the exact opposite impact of what she's intending I did I did try to go with it for the purposes of the part of course am i allowed to share the soundbar story yes so every year sarah and i meet in january which is partly because it's sarah's birthday uh but also because it just gives us like a moment to think it's like the year ahead don't yeah it's a spa and strategy day which is probably annoying for everybody around us as long as no one else is on the spa day it's fine we basically go to a spa that we've probably not been to before and in the morning we exchange some presents christmas and sarah's birthday um and then the rest of the day we just do spa but at the same time is talking about strategy which we love books we take notebooks around it's so funny one year we did it and i and i always had my phone because i'm always making notes and i accidentally left my phone in a robe and then the rope we had to like chase the robe around you chase the robes but i said just leave it and like it'll turn up you were like absolutely not but you got your tracking out and you tracked it to the men's changing very relaxing experience spa strategy day but we did both did a sound bath and I went in and it was the breathing for anyone that's done it it was you know it was uh the sounds and the breathing and the massage and I came out after three hours I think like this is a revelation I've never felt like this you came up very emotional I cried in the massage and I gave the person a hug oh my god and then when I saw Sarah she was about to go in I said oh that was amazing it's like a transformation experience so Sarah's like I just want a massage I don't know and I think you briefed the person it's like whatever Helen has had not I don't want that I was like I just want a massage I don't you can hit some of the gongs if you want like if if you want to do that that's fine there's not any sense of them you can hit a gong well yeah they've got the things haven't they yeah yeah I mean I think it's quite professional yeah well you know but I was also like I suffer with migraines and so you do actually have to be a bit so there was actually a bit of a serious point of like please don't give me a migraine which actually they took, to be fair to them, they took very seriously.

11:31I think I just saw you come out. Then what was the funniest though was you panicked about clearly what was going to happen to me and refused to leave. So I was like, you go home, it's fine. And I was much nearer where we were. And then you were just sitting there looking really nervous when I came out. And I was like, it's absolutely fine. But I think I did quite a lot of teeing it. Yeah, I think you framed the experience. Yeah. I didn't have to breathe, basically. So funny. That's going down memory, sparring. Also, we have a sparring strategy soon. So we can look forward to more fun. But I'm in charge of this one.

12:01So I've not booked a sound bath. Oh, okay. So we're going to frame the breathing. So what we've done is we've taken three whens at work that we think breathing might be able to help you. So like situations where perhaps you might be feeling a sense of stress or uncertainty. And based on the research, this could be a moment where thinking intentionally about breathing could help you in that situation. so we've got a when we've got a then for which is that's breathing exercise and then we also got the other why like what's the science behind it i mean like obviously we're not experts in this area so it's kind of high high level science and then what sarah has done that we'll share at the end is use ai to create a slightly more personalized when then um which i have found very helpful like did that today so as much as we can joke about like these things i was like oh something very practical very quick very short and easy to do and I sort of used your kind of when then why as a starting point personalized it and I was like oh yeah this is great I can imagine using this all the time so three practices and then one prompt for personalization that's the plan and so the first one is when you're about to speak but your mind is racing and your brain is really busy so I have this quite a lot because part of Sarah and I's job is to deliver workshops and presentations to companies and we're often like this morning for example my train was late oh I know you said I was really really like ah and um I got here five minutes before I needed to be on so everything was racing I was annoyed at myself that I wasn't I couldn't get here earlier I was sort of worried about like my brain was racing and so that is a moment where that mindset and also your kind of physical body could affect your performance because I might start presenting and I might be talking too fast or it comes out in a bit of a rush.

13:53So this is a moment when breathing can help you to respond better to that situation. So what we want to do here is when you've got that kind of like panic, busy brain, it's not how you want to show up, the then breathing exercise is to take a slow exhale through your mouth for four to six seconds. It's a really long, like really long. And you do that before you speak. And the reason that you want to do that is that long, slow release reduces cortisol. So cortisol is a stress hormone that gets kicked up. And it means that we get all kinds of tense. So we bring all of that into our conversations.

14:32The big, long breath gets rid of the cortisol. And it also steadies your voice. So it will lower. Remember when I did some voice training about, you know, making sure that you kind of want to have that lower voice. It gives you a bit more gravitas. whereas when we are really tense our vocal cords tense up and it makes us go naturally higher and so if you if you're kind of releasing all of that then your voice is lower you are slower and that is what you bring to that moment versus the height slightly stressed sped up version of you I actually had it this week I was doing a presentation in the shard which was very fancy as you'd imagine and I'd read I'd read this uh you know your notes beforehand on breathing and I often find the moment I get most nervous is when someone is introducing me so I we present all the time and I really enjoy presenting I'm a I'm a sort of comfortable presenter I like doing that but it's when it's that exact moment when someone's talking about you and I think it's because it feels a bit orcs you're like standing right there and I'm like someone's I suppose do I smile at the brilliant things they're trying to tell you obviously to that audience like Sarah's the best thing ever and you're just like I don't think I know what facial expression to adopt do I try and look like serious and credible or do I smile like what would that look like I don't know I don't think I have a serious incredible face like I don't want to look at myself doing that but um yeah so actually in that moment I think I wouldn't want to see some I don't want other people to see me go because I'm like yeah then they would but I think actually you can you can sort of do a subtle like just like a little bit of a and I think that helps me as I'm then because I was then walking onto a stage yeah so you know in just that that kind of millisecond before you're starting and I actually also had the same earlier in the week I was presenting to two very senior people in a company that I'd not met before and you know there's just quite a lot of expectation on that meeting and somebody had had kind of made that happen and they were there so I also wanted to do a really good job for them because they really believe in our work so then I was like my job is to be as good as she's clearly told them that we are I was like I hope I represent squiggly careers and amazing if well and again I and I could feel my heart you know when you know we've said before about you know when you can you suddenly feel your heart in a different way and I think I was just a little bit nervous and I did just sort of breathe out just for a bit longer and somebody also said to me about like your jaw can get quite tense and sort of sometimes especially like the forehand people can't see you like almost like opening your jaw a little bit and then I did feel quite I got really good feedback after the meeting as well so I was like maybe the breathing works so the next one is when you're feeling overwhelmed you know like out of control of your work which i do think this time of year you know that's all like much i was thinking like crunchy christmas you know there's just so much to do and just everything keeps piling on or maybe like before a holiday or there's just certain times where it just feels unmanageable and the breathing trick here that can help you regain a bit of a control is you want to take a breath for energy so in this situation again we might be feeling a little bit stressed we might be feeling we just be tired by it all a bit yeah oh so a breath for energy is something that can help you kind of keep going because you probably can't stop everything you know it's like you probably do have to do all that stuff so anything to kind of help you through it is what we need here so this is where you do a quick inhale through your nose and then a slow exhale through the mouth and you want to repeat this a couple of a couple of cycles and what this does it's a bit of sort of an energizing reset for you.

18:03So of course, this is not going to solve the fact that you've got loads of stuff to do. But if in that moment, you're feeling so overwhelmed that you can't do it, a kind of an energizing reset is helpful. And the science behind it, this is interesting, I thought, yeah, I thought it was quite interesting. So back to the stress thing again. So stress can make you breathe kind of shallow. And so you're kind of doing lots of kind of short, short breaths, really. And that affects our prefrontal cortex. So this is the bit in your brain that you get clarity, logic and perspective from. So the way that you're breathing is having an impact on how your brain is processing what you're trying to deal with.

18:38So stressed, short, shallow breaths mean that your brain is not able to process with logic and perspective. So it makes the hard thing harder if that is how you're breathing in that moment. Whereas when we take the breath in through our nose and the slow one out through our mouth, it sort of resets everything so you're it's easier to respond to the situation so if the first one is more about calming down the second one is more about like giving you energy yeah that energy boost yeah i would say the first one is about calm the second one's also about clarity yeah because you're you're you're the the energizing is a way of creating mental clarity like helping your brain do what you need it to do in that moment which is clarity perspective logic so that you can respond to the many things that you're trying to deal with.

19:23So I thought the next one was interesting because this is about when emotion gets in the way. And I was thinking about, you know, if somebody's having a conversation with you and you're getting emotional and there's nothing wrong with that, but most people would say they don't want to get emotional in that moment. Perhaps somebody's having a hard conversation with you or something's just feeling really difficult. And I've seen people get, it's always funny, isn't it? You get like double emotions i've then seen people get emotional and then get really upset about the fact they then got emotional so you're like it's like emotion on emotion and so i think i like the idea here that this could help you to choose like almost like your emotions a bit more in a moment where perhaps something like hard is happening and you can feel yourself getting upset or you could it could be the opposite you could feel yourself getting angry um so what could we do in that moment well i have actually been in this situation this week not everyone one but the upset one and i was and i had exactly what you were saying which is it's like i don't need to be upset by this and i'm not getting more upset by the fact that i'm feeling i might get you upset and then this is just distracting me from the conversation i need like there's some like we it's just not it's distracting and it's frustrating and none of that is actually useful for the conversation that we're trying to have um so i tried this one out this week because i've done a bit of research before i was in that moment and so the the the then if you are in this situation where emotions are kind of getting in the way of how you want to respond the then is the stanford physiological sigh which is quite hard to say but it is quite easy to do um so this is where you um you're in that situation and again like i was on camera so i could still do this without feeling like they were seeing me doing something yeah massive just need to breathe everybody you want actually to breathe this is so hard i did it like i didn't see my mouth or anything different than it would normally do but you you inhale and I did this through my mouth so you inhale and then you then do like another like a pop-up inhale and then you do a long slow exhale so I did this all through my mouth um which I don't know whether it's supposed to be mouth or nose but I did it through a mouth because it just felt easier and I I think the thing that helped me was actually more just move it I'm sure the breathing did something better for my body and we'll talk about science in a moment but the thing really that helped me is my mind shifted from I'm really annoyed about this emotion to the breathing so it gave it redirects your attention that's exactly what it did and it does do other things to your body as well like in a way of like controlling the emotions but just mentally focusing on this breathing exercise I did it about three times and while I was listening yeah I wasn't I wasn't speaking at that moment it was while I was listening and I was much more in I just felt much more in control both of my emotions and of what I was going to say so it kind of helped me it helped me in two ways so the science behind this as well as kind of my direct experience of it this week is that when you when you've got strong emotions it it makes you breathe a bit faster a bit more panicky about it and that spikes your heart rate and um it can create quite tunnel visions because it's kind of how we I guess yeah we survive in those moments like survive survive survive but that that kind of survive at all costs is not very helpful if you want to you know remain curious in a conversation yeah and sort of stay in it and keep doing it you're that kind of heart racing fast is escape like it's that kind of fight fight response whereas actually what we want you to do is to potentially be curious about the conversation and so the sigh just helps slow things down it helps you calm down and it helps you to stay in a conversation rather than respond in a way that might mean you're kind of almost like mentally exiting it yeah I do think there is a difference I've tried out some of these I think the breath that you do when no one's watching is different to the breath you can do in a moment so I've done some where but there's often it is quite useful to like really sigh out but you're never going to do that mid meeting yeah also that's like feedback for someone if you're like oh you know they'll be like oh god is it that boring you do that before I have seen you do do that I've told you you do I think you're not it's really interesting so you have this breath that you do where it sounds like you're like I'm so over this and sometimes I don't think it's that you are I think it's just that you're processing processing and thinking but it's almost like you know those unintended consequence things that we all have it's like the fact that I I frown when I'm thinking you have this particular breath that you do because sometimes it's like I hear you do it like maybe in like a workshop and I'll think well I hope people think she just she's like bored of doing it or whatever and it's never that it's actually often that you're like processing maybe what someone said or like making a link or a connection and obviously I know that really well but you definitely have this like breath that comes to you like it's very particular moment I do think it's like it's like a I just need a moment breath yeah and like and then because i need to catch up and think about what i want to do next but yeah i should probably do it less visibly and audibly do you want to hear about my um yes i would love to hear about your ai prompting um so i was on the train this morning so commuting on quite a busy train and i thought oh i wonder if you can personalize breathing based on you know sort of what's happening to you today so i said um i've had a full-on week with work um and home life i'm on my way to our end of year team day and i want to show up in a way that's present and calm uh can you give me three different breathing exercises to try on the train and explain why it works so i was like trying to do quite a specific product because i was like i don't want to look ridiculous on the train and also i was i want to i want to understand kind of why it works and so it did and it actually gave me some some different ones and it told me how long to repeat them for so it talked about the extended exhale so we talked about it like breathing basically breathe in for less than you breathe out if i was doing the simple squiggly careers version uh box breathing which i knew um and that's that's kind of quite easy to do so actually breathe in for hold for out for stay still for four that's kind of quite easy um i liked this one noting breaths you know we talked about noticing earlier this year that episode's always really stuck with me this idea here is that just breathe normally but all you do is say to yourself in your head but in and out you know basically you're just noticing your breath and what it's saying is that um it's essentially I suppose a bit like a kind of meditation like a mini meditation like a mini meditation because it's a if your if your mind wanders just think oh I've sort of stopped noticing my breath literally just notice your breath and I was like oh that feels like quite a useful thing to do and then I liked this three minute arrive calm routine and I was like okay you know because we are all I was thinking about how many back-to-back meetings people have the amount of switching people have in their days like into work and out of work most of us will have moments where we're like we want to arrive calm you don't want to be that person I'm always really mindful of this because I've worked with people like this you know people who turn up to everything frantic everything's frantic everything's stressy everything's full on and those people are not they're not nice people to be around but that's definitely all of us you know like some of the time but I'm I'm always like that's not that's not how I want to show up um and so it kind of talks about almost like as you arrive you kind of do that like notice your breath um almost like ground your feet on the floor so like you know like the whole like notice your feet like flat on the floor like stand up straight you know that open your diaphragm yeah so like kind of shoulders back open your diaphragm there's something about posture apparently that kind of helps you to you know like enter a room with confidence and calmness um and then yeah it gave me this 30 second arrive steady and you do one deep breath one four box breathing cycle the grounding scan that's the like feet kind of shoulders back one like intentional breath where you go I'm arriving here and at that point here is almost like your transition like almost like saying to yourself I'm here now and I mean I've added the I'm here now in like a I think it's quite nice to own that statement did you do it yeah well I was well actually so let's talk about the actual reality of what happened so I got to this room where we're recording now and I could I could obviously hear you so I'd got to go like okay I'm ready to do the podcast because like we're doing this then we do we've got a bit of switching going on it did make me think about you know like my posture how I was standing and also just you know how you do want to show up I was like it helped me a bit to let go of other things because I have got in my mind emails in my inbox that I need to send and reply to and things that I've not done so like that is definitely in the back of my mind and it helped me just with that tiny bit of perspective of like what matters most right now is being here with our team so we hope that has given you a bit of a perspective on how breathing can help you to support your performance at work we would love to know any breathing bits that we've missed so anything you already do that's helpful also your reflections on the episodes just email us we're helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com but if you are going through a busy time at the moment pre-christmas um we hope you're doing okay uh we hope this felt useful i'm back with you again soon bye for now bye everyone

28:51The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At Blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50 ,000 five-star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals. Free samples. Zero pressure. Right now, get up to 50 % off with minimum purchase. Plus, get a free professional measure at Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. You can't reason with the sun.

29:23Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's OmniShade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia. Engineered for whatever.