You are holding your breath now. Here's why that matters.

Low Tide Blog · Breathwork

You Are Holding Your Breath Right Now. Here's Why It Matters.

31 March 2026 · 8 minute read

Check. Right now. Are you actually breathing, or are you just... not dying?

There is a good chance you are doing that shallow, tight, top-of-the-chest thing that passes for breathing when you have been staring at a screen for three hours. Your shoulders are probably up. Your jaw is probably clenched. And you probably did not notice any of it until I pointed it out.

Welcome to the baseline state of most professionals. You are technically alive, but your nervous system is running like someone left the handbrake on while flooring the accelerator. And you have been doing it for so long that it feels normal. If you want the longer version of why this pattern forms in the first place, why you hold your breath without realising it goes deeper.

It is not normal. And breathwork, the actual practice, not the Instagram version, is one of the most effective tools you have for fixing it.

The stupid simple science of it

Your breathing is the only function in your body that runs on autopilot but can also be consciously controlled. That is not a small thing. It is a direct line into your autonomic nervous system, the part of you that decides whether you are in threat mode or recovery mode.

When you breathe short and shallow, which is what most of us do all day at work, you are telling your nervous system that something dangerous is happening. It responds accordingly. Cortisol goes up. Digestion slows down. Your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for clear thinking, complex decisions, and not sending that email, starts to go offline. Your body is preparing to fight or run. Except there is nothing to fight or run from. There is just a Teams notification and a passive-aggressive Slack message.

When you deliberately slow your breathing down, particularly the exhale, you activate the vagus nerve and flip the switch to the parasympathetic system. Recovery mode. Cortisol drops. Heart rate variability improves. The thinking brain comes back online. You are not just calming down. You are literally restoring access to the part of your brain that makes you good at your job.

This is not wellness woo. This is basic physiology. Your respiratory rate directly modulates your stress response. Every breath you take is either reinforcing the stress state or interrupting it. Most people spend eight to ten hours a day reinforcing it and then wonder why they cannot switch off at night.

What breathwork actually is (and is not)

Let's clear something up, because the word "breathwork" covers everything from a simple breathing exercise to a two-hour hyperventilation session with a facilitator and a Spotify playlist.

At the simple end, you have functional breathing practices. These are techniques you can use at your desk, before a meeting, or lying in bed at night. Things like box breathing, extended exhale breathing, or coherent breathing. They take minutes. They require nothing except your lungs. And they work immediately because they are directly manipulating your nervous system's settings. Functional breathing for ADHD nervous systems goes into this end of the spectrum in more detail.

At the deeper end, you have guided breathwork sessions. These are longer, more structured, and often more powerful. A session might last 30 to 60 minutes and use specific breathing patterns to access a deeper state of nervous system release. Some people experience emotional processing, physical sensation, or a profound sense of calm that they have not felt in months. It is not therapy in the clinical sense, but it can be therapeutic.

What breathwork is not: a replacement for medical treatment, a spiritual requirement, or something that requires you to believe in anything. It is a physical practice with measurable physiological effects. You do not need to be into wellness to benefit from it any more than you need to be into fitness to benefit from a walk.

One important caveat. If you have ever tried "deep breathing" for anxiety and it made you feel worse, you are not imagining it. There is a reason that happens, and it is covered in why deep breathing can make anxiety worse, along with the Buteyko approach that handles this differently.

Why the people who need it most are the last to try it

I spent years in financial services. Business analysis, product ownership, delivery cycles that never ended. And the culture in that world, and in most corporate environments, has a very specific relationship with stress: you manage it by ignoring it.

You drink more coffee. You push through. You pride yourself on performing under pressure. You treat the ability to function on five hours of sleep and constant cortisol as a professional skill rather than a warning sign. And when someone suggests that breathing might help, you dismiss it because it sounds too simple to be real. That is more or less the opening picture of burnout.

I get it. I was that person. The idea that something as basic as changing how you breathe could meaningfully affect your performance, your sleep, your stress levels, it sounds like the kind of thing someone with a dream catcher on their wall would say.

But here is what I have learned, both through training as a breathwork facilitator and through personal experience: the simplicity is the point. Your nervous system does not care about your job title, your deadlines, or your to-do list. It responds to physical signals. And breathing is the most direct physical signal you have access to.

The executives and senior professionals I have worked with often have the same reaction after their first proper breathwork session. It is some version of: "Why did nobody tell me about this ten years ago?" Because ten years ago, they were too busy performing competence to admit they were drowning. Sound familiar?

What you can do right now

You do not need to book a session to start. You can begin with what you have, which is a pair of lungs and two minutes.

Before your next meeting, try this: breathe in through your nose for four counts. Hold for two. Breathe out through your nose for six counts. Do that four times. Takes about a minute. What you are doing is extending the exhale relative to the inhale, which directly activates your parasympathetic nervous system. You will walk into that meeting with a regulated system, which means better listening, better decisions, and less reactivity.

After a stressful call or interaction, sit for 60 seconds and just breathe. Do not try to fix anything. Do not analyse what happened. Just breathe slowly and feel your feet on the floor. You are giving your nervous system a clear signal that the threat has passed, which prevents the stress from stacking on top of whatever came before it.

Before bed, lie flat and place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Breathe so that only the hand on your belly moves. Slow it right down. Five seconds in, seven seconds out. Five minutes of this will do more for your sleep than scrolling your phone for an hour, which, incidentally, is doing the exact opposite to your nervous system.

These are not hacks. They are not productivity tricks. They are the basics of nervous system regulation, and the fact that most professionals have never been taught them is, frankly, a failure of every corporate wellbeing programme that has ever existed.

Going deeper

The desk techniques work. They are real, they are evidence-based, and they will make a noticeable difference to your day. But they are the shallow end.

If you are someone who has been running in chronic stress for months or years, your nervous system has likely adapted to that state. It has become your default setting. Shifting that default requires more than a minute of box breathing before a meeting. It requires dedicated practice that goes deeper into the patterns your body has been holding.

That is where guided breathwork sessions come in. A facilitated session gives you the time, the structure, and the guidance to access a level of nervous system release that is difficult to reach on your own. It is not dramatic or performative. It is quiet, physical, and often surprisingly powerful.

I offer breathwork sessions for individuals and small groups, in person in Wicklow and online, and for organisations and HR teams who want something their staff will actually engage with. The approach is grounded, practical, and built for people who would rather have something that works than something that looks good on a wellness brochure.

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One last thing

If you have read this far, you are probably someone who recognises themselves in at least some of what I have described. The shallow breathing. The inability to switch off. The sense that your body has been running a stress programme in the background for longer than you care to admit.

You do not need to overhaul your life. You do not need to quit your job or move to the countryside or become someone who meditates at dawn. You just need to start breathing properly. It sounds ridiculous. It works anyway.

If you want to try the desk techniques in a guided format, the free Low Tide Calm app has them built in. No account, no email, works offline.