When Life Speeds Up, Slow Down Your Breath
Try this technique to stay steady while the world spins
It’s about that point in fall when the pace shifts from “ getting busy” to blur.
You wake up one morning and realize your days are scheduled down to the minute, your brain is juggling three timelines, and your body’s still trying to catch up with what month it is. (Not that I’d know what that’s like or anything.)
You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just running a system that wasn’t designed to operate at this speed.
When life accelerates, most of us unconsciously do the same — we talk faster, move faster, breathe faster. The problem is, your body reads that quick, shallow breath as a signal: danger. That’s when focus scatters, patience thins, and you feel like you’re one notification away from snapping.
The solution isn’t to stop. It’s to rebalance.
Better Balance Through Breathing
Alternate nostril breathing is a simple practice that helps both sides of your brain and body sync up: the doing and the being, the focus and the calm. It’s grounding, yes, but also clarifying. You feel more centered and more capable of moving forward without the mental static.
Here’s how (click here for a demo):
Sit comfortably and take a normal breath in through your nose.
Use your right thumb finger to close your right nostril.
Inhale slowly through your left nostril.
Close your left nostril with your ring finger, release your right thumb, and exhale through your right nostril.
Inhale through your right. Then take your right ring finger off the left nostril, and exhale through the left nostril as you block the right nostril.
That’s one cycle. Keep switching back and forth for 2–5 minutes.
It might feel a little weird, but you’ll get used to it. Be sure to keep the breath smooth, steady, and easy.
What’s Happening Here?
Besides looking weird, you mean?
Alternate Nostril Breathing activates both branches of your autonomic nervous system: the one that gets you moving and the one that helps you recover. When they’re in balance, you can respond to change instead of react to it.
In yoga traditions, this balance is symbolic. In modern terms, it’s neuroregulation: aligning the right and left hemispheres of your brain, equalizing oxygen and CO₂ levels, and gently calming your stress response.
The effect? A clearer head. A steadier mood. The ability to think without the undercurrent of rush.
And if this sounds good, I have news for you: you can’t overdo it. So feel free to use this practice any time you feel pulled in multiple directions.
Between meetings or school drop-offs.
When your thoughts feel noisy and scattered.
Before switching from work mode to home mode.
It’s especially effective during transitions — the spaces between — because it helps your body shift gears with you.
What We Get Wrong About Resilience
Change doesn’t just test your adaptability. It also tests your relationship with pace.
Most of us try to match it. To meet the speed of life with more speed of our own. But resilience isn’t about getting ahead, or even keeping up. It’s about finding the rhythm that lets you stay yourself, no matter how fast (or slow!) the world moves.
Your breath is that rhythm. And the more you practice balancing it, the steadier you’ll feel… even when everything else is perpetually in motion.
Last Gasp
“In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to.”
— Dave Hollis
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