Coffee, scrolling, pinching yourself…
A better fix when your energy is flatlining
Has this ever happened to you?
The meeting’s done, the work is moving, no real crisis on the horizon. Everything is going swimmingly. And yet, you’re not feeling it.
You’re not stressed or even tired but are just… kind of flat. Present but not all in.
Your brain? Functioning. Your attitude? Feeling aces. But if your body has been running in low-power mode for the past few hours, you might find the usual fixes (coffee, scrolling, pinching your arm) aren’t really helping on that front.
Most breathwork tends towards treating too much activation, too much noise, a nervous system running hot. This one is for when the problem is the other direction and you could use a little bit of that energy.
Like Your Appliances, You Have a Standby Mode
When you’re sitting still and focusing for a long time – desk work, screens, back-to-back calls – your body does something sensible: it redistributes resources toward the mental task at hand and dials back everything else.
Circulation to your extremities can decrease. Your muscle engagement drops. Your breathing becomes shallower, with less movement of the diaphragm.
This is your ever wise and efficient nervous system optimizing for what you’re asking of it. The problem is that after a few hours, you’ve trained your body into a kind of standby mode. And standby doesn’t end automatically when the work does.
Bring On the Controlled (Breathing) Chaos
Bhastrika comes from the Sanskrit word for bellows, the tool blacksmiths use to force air into a fire and stoke it back to life.
It gets used sometimes as a pre-performance breath before doing the thing that requires more than you feel like you have. But you can benefit from this one anytime, even if you’re not performing anything other than typing an email.
When you breathe rapidly and forcefully through the nose in both directions, a few things happen at once. Ventilation increases, which temporarily boosts oxygenation and blood flow to your brain and muscles. Your diaphragm moves more in the next thirty seconds than it may have moved in the past hour. You may feel yourself “warming up”. And your nervous system registers the physical intensity and gently-but-persistently alerts your body to GET WITH THE PROGRAM.
The idea here is to introduce a tiny bit of controlled fight or flight. Not enough to trigger anxiety or spike your adrenaline, but enough to register the feeling of your body coming back online.
How to Catch the Fire
Sit upright. You want to be tall enough that your chest has room to expand. Rest your hands on your thighs.
Inhale forcefully through your nose, letting your belly and chest expand fully. Exhale forcefully through your nose, pulling your belly back in. With most techniques you emphasize either the inhale or the exhale, but with this breath, both are active.
Keep your pace at roughly one full breath per second. Fast, but not frantic. Keep your shoulders and face relaxed. The effort lives in your torso.
Start with 20 breaths, then stop and breathe normally for 30 seconds. Notice what shifted.
A second or third set is fine if you’d like – some people need a couple sets before the heat builds. And you can build up gradually as you feel comfortable. Soon enough you might start to notice some warmth in your chest, a little tingling in your hands, a sense of your body waking up from the inside.
Kind of like a furnace catching.
If you really dig this one and want to go for even longer, have at it. A controlled study on Bhastrika found participants experiencing reduced anxiety and increased positive mental affect after a month of practicing this breath as part of a protocol. Even wilder, there were changes in practitioners’ emotion-related brain activity.
A few things to know before you start: Bhastrika isn’t appropriate if you’re pregnant, have uncontrolled high blood pressure, or are prone to vertigo. Not sure? Talk to your doctor before trying it.
Lightheadedness means you’re moving too fast or too hard. Begin with fewer breaths and build gradually if you’re feeling it – and don’t do this lying down.
The goal here is not to exhaust yourself or spike your heart rate into something uncomfortable. It’s just to give yourself a little oomph, to make whatever’s coming next in your day that much easier.
The fuel is already there. Bhastrika is just the bellows.
Last Gasp
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
— Hanna Siegel, discussing Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
The Breathing & Balance Hub includes short, on-demand sessions for exactly this kind of reset. It’s filled with practices designed for real life, not a quiet morning with nowhere to be. Sessions start at 2 minutes. Join here →