Wired for No Reason

Why your body’s ready for something that isn’t coming

What’s your resting heart rate?

You might not know offhand. But if you’ve got a smartwatch or a fitness app, you’re probably just a couple taps away from finding it.

Now, how about your resting breathing rate?

Most people can’t answer this one, since almost nothing in daily life ever asks. But it’s a useful number to notice because, unlike heart rate, you can deliberately influence it within seconds.

And doing that changes how the rest of your day feels.

You’re Waiting for the “All Clear” and May Not Even Know It

Here’s why this is worth five minutes: your breathing rate is a real time signal that reflects how primed your nervous system is for something to happen.

A faster resting rate doesn’t just mean you’re breathing more. It means your body is running a background program that expects to need that extra air. You may not realize it, but it keeps you at the ready and in alert mode.

Very helpful mid-crisis. At your desk on a Wednesday, not so much.

This is the mechanism behind that low-grade wired feeling that shows up with no reason to point to. Nothing’s wrong; nothing’s urgent. But you’re breathing like it is, and your nervous system is getting its cues from your breathing more than the other way around.

Normal Isn’t Optimal

So what’s typical?

A 2025 study tracked resting breathing rate in over 2,200 adults and the median came out to 15.8 breaths per minute, almost smack in the center of the 12-20 breaths-per-minute range doctors gauge as normal.

But that range exists to help clinicians interpret one vital sign, not to tell you whether your baseline is working in your favor. And the same study found that people with higher resting rates were more likely to also show markers of accumulated load: more abdominal fat, less activity, more self-reported stress.

It’s not happening in a manner that comes across as sick or urgent. And that’s part of the reason so many people breathe faster than they need to, all day, without a single symptom that would ever prompt someone to check.

How to Proactively Create a Sense of Calm

A couple weeks ago, I had you match your breath to about 6 breaths a minute, the resonant frequency where your breathing and heart rate sync up (You Used to Be Better at This). This week isn’t about hitting that number, or any specific target.

It’s about proving to yourself that the pace you’re running at isn’t fixed, so the next time you actually need to downshift, you’re not just hoping calm shows up on its own. You’re the one making it happen.

Here’s how:

Start with the baseline. Set a timer for 60 seconds and breathe normally. Don’t try to control it, just count each full inhale-exhale as one breath. Write the number down.

Now try the ladder. Sit comfortably. Inhale through your nose for 3 counts, exhale for 3 counts. Do that for about a minute. Then add one count to both sides – 4 in, 4 out – for another minute. Keep climbing, one beat at a time, spending a minute at each new pace. Go up to wherever count starts to feel like effort instead of ease. (For most people that’s somewhere in the range of 6-8 seconds each on the inhale and exhale.)

Recheck. Spend 3 minutes at your top comfortable count, set a 60-second timer again, and go back to what feels like a natural pace. You may not maintain the long count you just focused on maintaining, but you’ll probably land lower than your original number.

The point isn’t the new number itself, but what it proves. The rush you’ve been running in wasn’t coming from anywhere real, and now you know exactly how to end it, on your own schedule, instead of waiting for your body to decide the coast is clear.

Last Gasp

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin

If checking this number was eye-opening, the first part of the Breathing Lab is built around exactly this kind of self-assessment – plus what to actually do once you know where you’re starting from. Join me live on August 22nd. Details and registration here →

Safety note: If your resting breathing rate is persistently elevated, newly changed, or accompanied by shortness of breath, chest pain, fainting, fever, wheezing, or reduced exercise tolerance, seek clinical advice rather than treating it as a stress signal alone.