Holding your breath or breathing shallow at work? Try this

Short answer: It is easy to breathe high in the chest, or briefly hold your breath, while concentrating or stressed at work without noticing. A quick check with one hand on your chest and one on your belly shows which you are doing, and slow belly breathing at a count of about five in and five out is something you can do at your desk.

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You can check your breathing in ten secondsWhy the belly breath mattersA version you can do at your deskTry this today

A 2023 review in Frontiers in Physiology, written with American workplaces in mind, made the case that the workplace is one of the best places to practise daily deep breathing. Its reasons are ordinary: you spend a large share of your waking hours there, you sit a lot, work stress is common, and the day already has natural breaks. In other words, the place where your breathing tends to get tight is also the easiest place to fix it.

The useful part is learning to catch the tight breathing as it happens, because it rarely announces itself.

You can check your breathing in ten seconds

Shallow breathing does not feel like struggling for air. The breath just sits high in your chest, and sometimes it pauses altogether while you concentrate on a hard message or a tense call.

Cleveland Clinic describes a simple test. Put one hand on your upper chest and the other just below your ribs, then breathe in slowly through your nose. In a full belly breath, the lower hand rises as your stomach pushes out, and the hand on your chest stays almost still. If the top hand moves and the bottom one barely does, you are breathing mainly with your chest.

Try it at a few different moments in a workday: after a meeting, while replying to something difficult, halfway through the afternoon. The pattern across the day tells you more than any single check.

Why the belly breath matters

The diaphragm is the dome-shaped muscle under your lungs, and breathing with it is what makes the belly move. Cleveland Clinic lists what this kind of breathing does: it helps you relax and lowers stress, slows your heart rate and lowers blood pressure, and helps you breathe out the waste gas in your lungs more fully.

That is the real difference between "just breathe" and a technique. A deliberate, slow breath that moves the belly gives your body a signal it does not get from the quick, high breaths of a busy day.

Cleveland Clinic also warns that it can feel tiring at first. The diaphragm is a muscle, and if you have been chest breathing for years it needs practice. That tiredness is normal and fades as it becomes more automatic.

A version you can do at your desk

The NHS breathing exercise for stress works sitting in a chair, which makes it office friendly:

• sit back with your feet flat on the floor, about hip width apart;
• breathe gently into your belly, in through your nose and out through your mouth;
• breathe in for a slow count of five and out for a slow count of five;
• keep going for at least five minutes.

The NHS notes you may not reach a full count of five at first. Start with what you can manage. The aim is a steady, unforced breath, not a big gulp.

Shallow breathing from stress is common and harmless in itself. But see a doctor if breathlessness comes on when you are resting, keeps getting worse, or comes with chest pain, a racing or irregular heartbeat, or feeling faint. Chest pain with breathlessness, or lips turning blue, needs emergency help straight away.

Try this today

Tie the two-hand check to something that already happens at work, like sending a message you were nervous about or coming back from a meeting. Each time, notice which hand moves, then take five slow belly breaths at a count of five.

Linking it to a moment that already repeats means you do not have to remember to do it, and five breaths is short enough to fit anywhere.

Sojiwa has a free guided Focus Breath, six seconds in and six out, with a circle animation and a seconds countdown, so you can follow it without counting in your head.