How slow breathing calms down your brain

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Just breathe! When you’re gripped by anxiety, hearing this well-intentioned advice can be infuriating. Compared with the power of my body’s fight-or-flight response, the notion that I can find calm by tuning into my breath feels almost fanciful.

But recently I came across a study in Scientific Reports that caught my eye because it showed that slow breathing makes a difference not just to how people feel, but to their brain activity. The results have increased my confidence that breathing can make a meaningful difference.

The researchers set things up so their participants either knew they’d be exposed to horrible images (such as pictures of injuries and scary animals) or they thought there’d be a chance they might be – this latter condition acted as a simulation of ‘anticipatory anxiety’, like when you have a dentist appointment and you’re not sure if you might need a horrible procedure.

Anticipatory anxiety increased the aversive impact of the images – both in terms of how bad the participants felt after looking at them, and in terms of the electrical activity in their brains, specifically in the beta-frequency range that’s known to be amplified when we’re stressed or worried.

Crucially, however, the effects of anticipatory anxiety on subjective feelings and brain activity were dulled if the participants engaged in 30 seconds of slow breathing (six seconds in, six seconds out) before the task. In fact, after slow breathing, the participants had lower beta brain activity in the anxiety condition than they had in the non-anxiety condition after normal breathing (two seconds in, two seconds out).

It’s a small study and it’s long established that neuroscience findings can be seductive, so I’m wary of being overly gullible. But I thought the design was clever. It showed that, while anxiety can intensify our difficult experiences, a simple, slow-breathing technique can mitigate these effects.

by Christian Jarrett

FIND OUT MORE

Check out the Psyche Guide ‘How to Breathe’ (2022) by Martin Petrus.

Read the results of another study published this year that found slow-paced breathing can assist emotional regulation.

NOTE TO SELFHABITS AND ROUTINES

My year of slow-reading War and Peace

Photo of a person reading Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” with a red decorative cover while sitting near a window.

Photo by Ally McNaughton

I usually start the year with the goal of reading more books. But, this year, my goal is to read just one: War and Peace (1869).

Leo Tolstoy’s novel has been on my shelf for years, but lighter and shorter fare has always come between us. ‘I’ll read this one quick, easy novel,’ I think, ‘then I’ll give Tolstoy my full attention.’ Years passed. Until I encountered the idea of the ‘slow read’, via Simon Haisell’s newsletter Footnotes and Tangents. It’s Haisell’s third and final year running an online club for this particular novel, producing podcasts to accompany each week’s reading, and in 2025 his subscriber list has swelled like the ranks of the Napoleonic and Russian armies advancing towards each other, with me among their number.

War and Peace has 361 chapters, most shorter than 10 pages. Having started on 1 January and reading a chapter a day, I can expect to reach the epilogue not long after Christmas. This makes my experience similar to how the earliest version of the story, published in weekly newspaper instalments, was read. Now more than halfway through the year, my sense of time has shifted in response to this routine. The book as an object has become a talisman, a tangible manifestation of how a daily habit can build into a much bigger accomplishment: the growing section of pages in my left hand marking out the year so far; the dwindling section in my right hand showing the year yet to unfold. On the left is what is done and cannot be changed; on the right are possibilities still open, choices yet to be made, days to be filled with activities of my choosing. If this is what I can achieve through an extra 15 minutes of reading a day, what else could I add to my life in a similarly manageable, daily microdose? My guitar calls to me from across the room, and the Duolingo owl hoots softly, menacingly, from my phone.

by Freya Howarth

FIND OUT MORE

Join the ‘slow read’ book club at Simon Haisell’s online newsletter Footnotes and Tangents; the upcoming novels are Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Sep-Nov 2025) and The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (Nov-Dec 2025).

Build your reading habit, at any speed, with the help of the Psyche Guide ‘How to Read More Books’ (2025) by Christian Jarrett.

Grow your book collection so your next read is at the ready, with tips from my Psyche Guide ‘How to Nurture a Personal Library’ (2022).

NOTE TO SELFWORK AND VOCATION

Are you saying ‘thank you’ too effusively?

A group of office workers turned to face a colleague, clapping and smiling, in a modern meeting room setting.

Photo by Dusan Petkovic/Getty

I was taken aback a few years ago when an article went viral admonishing its readers for sending so many ‘thank you’ emails – we’re all struggling with overflowing inboxes, it claimed, and insisting on replying ‘thank you’ all the time, while polite, just adds to the collective burden. Guilty as charged, I thought at the time.

According to a recent paper, there’s another reason to go easy on your gratitude. In the words of the research team led by Kristin Laurin at the University of British Columbia, saying ‘thank you’ too intensely could have ‘potential negative consequences’ for your ‘impression-management goals’. In short, it could make you seem like less of a boss.

The researchers came to their conclusion after presenting hundreds of participants with examples of exchanges between a helper and a thanker. Some of these were fictional vignettes, others were real-life workplace exchanges. Gratitude expressions ranged from the to-the-point ‘Thanks’ to the much more effusive ‘Thank you so much for taking your time to do this for me. I’m incredibly grateful. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. Thank you again.’

Participants rated more effusive thankers as being lower in status and lower in power (that is, having less control over resources and decision-making), relative to helpers. In the real-world examples, this was specifically the case when the message of thanks dominated, rather than being embedded in a longer message.

Expressing gratitude has many benefits – it helps us all get along, among other things – but Laurin and her team said their work shows being too effusive could have unintended consequences. If you’re an agreeable person but you also have ambitions for getting ahead, it might be worth pausing before expressing your next thankful message.

by Christian Jarrett

FIND OUT MORE

An analysis by the energy company Ovo claimed that ‘thank you’ emails are bad for the environment and that if British adults each sent one fewer of these emails each day, we would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year.

For another nuanced take on gratitude, check out the Psyche Idea ‘True Gratitude is a Communal Emotion, Not a Wellness Practice’ (2020) by Michal Zechariah.

NOTE TO SELFCOMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

A little Japanese trick for saying ‘no’

People in a small, well-lit Japanese restaurant or bar, with a menu on the wall and beverages on the counter.

Photo by John Steele/Alamy

As I’ve got older, I’ve got better at saying ‘no’ to requests I don’t fancy, but I regularly fail. Usually, I feel the urge to give a socially acceptable reason – busyness, or a clash. But, without an excuse, sometimes I lie (which feels wrong), or I people-please and agree (which also feels bad… for me).

So, during a recent trip to Japan, I was intrigued to learn a new word for ‘no’. In Japanese, saying chotto is a way of declining without offence. According to the newsletter Japan or Die, chotto translates directly as ‘a little’, but its meaning is more subtle: ‘If someone asks you if you want to go to a party tomorrow and that’s not something you want to do … all you have to say is Ashita wa chotto (‘Tomorrow is a little…’) and the meaning is conveyed.’

Chotto is an example of a conversational tactic called an ‘implicature’. As the philosopher of language Nikhil Mahant explained in a recent Aeon essay, it allows us to ‘convey meaning without breaking social norms’.

All languages have implicatures, but it turns out that cultures disagree on how to use them. One 2011 study, for example, explored the contrasting refusal strategies of American and Japanese participants. The Americans were more likely to give a direct ‘no’, or cite alternative plans (‘I’m busy that weekend’), whereas Japanese speakers would use chotto, or postpone an answer (‘Right now, I don’t know my schedule’). Interestingly, Japanese participants found the American strategies rude; the Americans found the Japanese tactics frustrating.

The language of implied refusal, it seems, is delicate, and sometimes you might offend without realising. Has learning this made it easier for me to say no? Well, a little…

by Richard Fisher

FIND OUT MORE

If you’re an occasional people-pleaser (like me), learn the techniques of healthy, confident refusal in the Psyche Guide ‘How to Say No’ (2023) by Shayla Love.

The British philosopher Paul Grice argued that implicatures arise due to the desire to maintain cooperation and helpfulness during conversation. Learn more in his Aeon Idea ‘What We Say vs What We Mean: What Is Conversational Implicature?’ (2018).

NOTE TO SELFMUSIC

The beats that make us want to move

People dancing at an outdoor festival, colourful tents in background, clear blue sky overhead.

At the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, 2013. Photo by Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Some musical rhythms are like magic spells: when we hear them, many of us can’t help bobbing our heads, swaying in time, animating our arms and legs. The feeling we have in that moment has a scientific name: the ‘pleasurable urge to move to music’ (PLUMM).

I learned about PLUMM from a paper on why some rhythms incite that feeling more than others. It has a lot to do with the complexity of a rhythm. Previous research has shown that very simple or very complex rhythms provoke relatively little urge to move – likely they seem too predictable or too unpredictable, respectively. People tend to feel the most PLUMM when they hear rhythms of medium complexity (ie, those with a moderate amount of syncopation, or off-beat emphasis).

According to the researchers Alberte Seeberg, Tomas Matthews and colleagues, moderately complex rhythms hit a ‘sweet spot of predictability’, and the effect has been interpreted in light of the predictive processing framework in neuroscience. Recently, these researchers found that when a rhythm contains more than one drum sound (such as a combo of bass drum, snare and hi-hat), the advantage of medium complexity is more pronounced.

I love beats of many kinds, and this research got me thinking about why they make me feel the way they do. At the lower end of complexity, there’s a minimal techno rhythm like this one by The Field – great for focus, but it doesn’t inspire me to move. On the very complex end, a spiky, complicated rhythm by Autechre is something to get lost in, but good luck finding a way to dance to it. So what’s in that sweet spot? We all can think of dance-floor favourites, but try this track by Flying Lotus – a core pulse you can follow, seasoned with little surprises. Commence head-bobbing.

by Matt Huston

FIND OUT MORE

The meaning of ‘syncopation’ is well demonstrated in this brief video by the musician Andi Rodhe. As he builds an increasingly syncopated beat, see if you find a ‘sweet spot’ partway through where the urge to move feels highest.

If you’d like to read about other ways that music grips the mind and why, check out the Psyche Idea ‘What Is It About Musical Hooks That Makes Them So Catchy?’ (2023) by Tim Byron and Jadey O’Regan.