5 Breaths for Focus, Better Sleep, and Your Own Finely Crafted Program

1. Thirty Days to Better Sleep and Higher Vagal Tone

“Taken together, our results suggest that slow-paced breathing performed before sleeping may enhance restorative processes at the cardiovascular level during sleep.”

- Laborde et al. (2019), Journal of Clinical Medicine

Here’s another excellent study from Laborde & colleagues, with lots we could cover. But the take-home messages were that 15 min of slow breathing (6 breaths/min) before sleep for 30 days led to:

• Significantly better subjective sleep quality

• Significantly higher nighttime vagal tone (via HF-HRV)

• Higher (but not significant) morning vagal tone

Not bad for just 15 minutes a night 👏

2. The Centering Breath (and 5 Breaths for Better Focus)

“[B]reathe in for six seconds, hold that breath for two seconds, and then breathe out for seven seconds. When you modulate your breathing this way, you're controlling your state of arousal and corralling your body's natural response to stress.”

- Dr. Jason Selk & Tom Bartow, Organize Tomorrow Today

Here’s a nice breath to try whenever you need to re-center. In for 6, hold for 2, exhale for 7. Even just one of those is enough to reset your focus.

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P.S. Here’s a guest blog I recently wrote for ResBiotic all about breathing & focus: Why Breathing Gets You Focused (and 5 ways to do it)

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