A Simple Way to Reset

I came across a simple breathing exercise recently that really works for me to de-stress.

Here’s a YouTube short going through the process:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cwBVxZvo3x4

Fill your lungs to about 90 percent.

Let it out to about 10 percent.

Hold for five seconds at the top and bottom.

Repeat that five times.

That’s it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cwBVxZvo3x4

It doesn’t look like much, but it works. It slows things down. Clears your head a bit. Helps you reset when you feel yourself getting pulled in too many directions.

For the past 35 years, I’ve learned how to manage stress better than I used to. Not perfectly, but better.

Something like this helps with that.

It’s easy to overlook small habits because they don’t feel important in the moment. But over time, they add up. The way you respond to stress, the way you pause instead of react, the way you keep things from building up negatively impacts your life in dramatic ways.

I’d recommend trying it sometime.

— Mark Edgington

This article also appears on Medium where you can learn more about Mark Edgington’s ongoing work.