You’ve Been Holding Your Breath Since Tuesday
Why you forget to breathe, and an easy “do it now” fix
There’s a moment that happens dozens of times a day. In fact, it might be happening to you right now.
You open an email. You switch to a new tab. A notification pulls your attention to the corner of the screen. And for a beat… sometimes longer… you stop breathing.
Not consciously or dramatically. It’s not a “holy sh!t I think they might be dead” kind of stopped breathing.
More that your breath just quietly disappears, the way background noise disappears without you noticing, until suddenly you’re aware you’re working to get air in.
In 2007, a consultant named Linda Stone was learning to pay more attention to her own breathing when she noticed something alarming. She breathed differently when she was walking around her office than when she was sitting at her computer.
The difference wasn’t subtle. And it wasn’t just her. As she started observing and testing other people, around 80% of them did the same thing. Put a screen in front of them and their breaths got shallower… if they remembered to breathe at all.
She called it “email apnea”, and later “screen apnea” once she realized this reaction wasn’t reserved for just checking messages.
The name has stuck, but the problem is bigger.
Your Family Chat Really is Triggering
Stone estimated that 80% of the people she observed held their breath or breathed shallowly while checking their email. It sounds surprising at first, but actually makes sense.
When we’re concentrating, anticipating something, or feeling mildly threatened, the breath naturally tightens. It’s part of the stress response.
But when the trigger is a full inbox, a packed calendar, or a family group chat, the response doesn’t turn off. The source of tension is ambient and constant, which means the breath-holding is too.
Most people don’t even realize they’re doing it. That’s the nature of it. It’s not gasping or struggling. It’s just a breath that never quite arrives, a chest that never fully expands, an exhale that gets clipped short before it’s actually done.
A Long Term, Low Level, Hard-to-Identify Misery
The effects of habitual shallow breathing are cumulative, sneaky, and easy to miss.
Here’s one piece most people don’t know: carbon dioxide is not just a waste gas you exhale. It’s the signal your body uses to release oxygen from your blood into your cells.
If you breathe too shallowly, too often, your CO2 levels drop. When that happens, the oxygen you’re breathing doesn’t get delivered as efficiently. You can breathe but you’re running on less than you need.
Add to that the physical toll of shallow upper-chest breathing: the neck and shoulder muscles doing work they were never designed to do, the nervous system reading short rapid breaths as a signal to stand guard, cortisol ticking along at a low level in the background.
It may not feel like a fire. You don’t feel terrible. You just feel a little more tense, a little less clear, a little more tired than the day probably warrants.
When Habits Run Amok
Habits that start as responses to pressure sometimes have a way of outlasting the pressure itself.
The breath-holding may begin during a demanding stretch of life (a stressful job, a hard season, years of being needed in too many directions at once). But once it’s been going on for years (yes, years), it doesn’t feel like something is wrong. It just feels like you.
You’re contained and in control. You’re demure (hello, 2024). Not someone who makes a fuss.
Now check out the people around you. How are they breathing?
You may notice it in an older parent, a partner, a colleague who has spent decades in high-demand roles: a person who carries a kind of braced stillness that never quite releases, who breathes in a way that looks like they’re managing something even when nothing is wrong.
They’re not stressed, exactly. They’ve just been holding on so long that holding on has become their resting state.
But it wasn’t always that way. These patterns are learned, and they can be unlearned. Yay, neuroplasticity!
The 00:00:12 Solution
When breath-holding becomes habitual, the inhale doesn’t disappear; your body won’t allow it. What gets clipped is the full release. The breath stays high and short, and the reset that would shift the nervous system toward calm never actually arrives.
Here’s a solution that’s simpler than you may think: make the exhale twice as long as the inhale.
Breathe in through your nose for a count of four. Breathe out through your nose for a count of eight. Keep it slow and controlled beginning to end. Let the exhale finish completely before beginning the next breath. If eight feels long at first, focus on how you’re metering that out-breath so it lasts a little longer.
Eight rounds. 12 seconds each. About a minute and a half.
The extended exhale activates your vagus nerve. Your parasympathetic nervous system gets the message that the “emergency” is over. And oxygen delivery starts working the way it’s supposed to.
You can do this at your desk, in the car, in the two minutes before something you’re dreading. It doesn’t take much time or effort to reintroduce your nervous system to the exhale it’s been skipping all week.
And next time you check your notifications, take a 4-8 breath first to remind your nervous system: you’re the one in charge, and here’s what it’s supposed to do.
Last Gasp
“The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Goethe thinks your inbox has had the upper hand long enough.)
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I am a breath holder and can’t wait to try this. Also love the sideburns pic in the newsletter!