Meuret crunched the data and found that panic, like asthma, is usually preceded by an increase in breathing volume and rate and a decrease in carbon dioxide. To stop the attack before it struck, subjects breathed slower and less, increasing their carbon dioxide. This simple and free technique reversed dizziness, shortness of breath, and feelings of

We’ll scan our email, write something down, check Twitter, and do it all over again, never really focusing on any specific task. In this state of perpetual distraction, breathing becomes shallow and erratic. Sometimes we won’t breathe at all for a half minute or longer.

One text, A Book on Breath by the Master Great Nothing of Sung-Shan, offered this advice:8 Lie down every day, pacify your mind, cut off thoughts and block the breath. Close your fists, inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. Do not let the breathing be audible. Let it be most subtle and fine. When the breath is full, block it. The

Fears weren’t just a mental problem, and they couldn’t be treated by simply getting patients to think differently. Fears and anxiety had a physical manifestation, too.

To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose fe

He signed up for Hof’s ten-week video course, and within weeks watched as his insulin levels normalized, pain subsided, and blood pressure plunged. He quit taking enalapril and reduced his insulin intake by around 80 percent. He still took ibuprofen, but only a pill or two once a week.

Sympathetic states help ease pain and keep blood from draining out if we get injured. They make us meaner and leaner, so we can fight harder or run faster when confronted with danger. But our bodies are built to stay in a state of heightened sympathetic alert only for short bursts, and only on occasion.9 Although sympathetic stress takes just a sec

The deeper and more softly we breathe in, and the longer we exhale, the more slowly the heart beats and the calmer we become.

The second half of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic, has an opposite role.6 It sends stimulating signals to our organs, telling them to get ready for action. A profusion of the nerves to this system are spread out at the top of the lungs. When we take short, hasty breaths, the molecules of air switch on the sympathetic nerves. These wo