Another Day, Just Breathe

I used to have a coworker who sat in the office next to mine – a manager with the supernatural ability to juggle seventeen urgent tasks while maintaining the serene expression of someone enjoying a spa day. She was like that unfazed elementary school teacher who calmly captures a spider while a whole class of third-graders stand on their chairs screaming at the top of their lungs.

“But even superheroes have their moments of ordinary vulnerability, their subtle tells reveal the human beneath the cape. Hers was The Sigh.”

More often than not, when she returned to her desk after one of her problem-solving expeditions across our cubicle land, she’d settle into her chair and release this deep, resounding exhale. Not dramatic enough for reality TV, mind you, but a soft, soul-deep “Let’s reset” kind of sigh. Sometimes she’d follow it with a quiet “OK” – as if gently informing the universe that she had, indeed, handled it. She had no idea I could hear this little ritual (though I doubt she’d mind). She certainly didn’t know it had become my secondhand cool-down practice. That sigh would break me out of my autopilot cycle and shoot me straight into the mode of sheer awareness. There was something incredibly reassuring about this sound. If she was centered, surely the office wasn’t about to implode.

There’s actually science behind sighing (because our bodies contain such fascinating wisdom). Sighing acts like that magical reset button for our nervous system, and it activates our body’s chill mode (scientists call it the parasympathetic system). This neurological trick lowers our heart rate, drops our blood pressure, and tells those stress hormones to take a hike. It’s like our body’s version of turning the system off and back on again. And the oxygen boost is just a cherry on top. In the corporate battlefield, sighing is basically free therapy that’s accessible around the clock. It helps us navigate our way between the “urgent” emails and the floods of spreadsheets. It’s our body’s way of saying “I’ve got this,” even when our brain is screaming “I absolutely do not have this.” In other words, science favors normal occasional sighing as an important psychological and physiological regulatory mechanism, under regular conditions.

Interestingly, research hints that our breathing patterns might not always serve us best, especially those of us who sit all day (who would have thought that bad posture is largely at fault). It seems absurd because breathing is the very first thing we do as our little bodies hit this world. And yet, when I consciously take a deep breath and my diaphragm gets to work, it feels like I’ve discovered some ancient secret. As if I’ve somehow found my way back to myself after wandering through the day on autopilot, despite having taken at least seventeen thousand breaths that day.

“We’re running our most critical life functions in the background while our foreground attention is captured by… what exactly? Facebook? Email? The dread of Monday morning meetings?”

Perhaps we all need that sigh – that momentary return to consciousness – more than we realize. But with exponentially more recent focus on the benefits of mindful breathing, we have access to a variety of resources that can help guide us into the world of intentional breathing¹. I felt it this morning while meditating with Melissa Wood Tepperberg as she guided me back to my center. 

I sometimes wonder if my serene coworker knows she’s been my unsuspecting breathing coach all this time. That her momentary vulnerability – that soul-deep sigh – was the quiet permission for me to honor my own reset moment. Perhaps that’s the most beautiful thing about breathing – it’s contagious in the best possible way. When someone near us takes that moment to reset, to come up for air, they give permission for the rest of us to do the same. In the rushing current of our days, these shared moments of conscious breath are like secret handshakes among fellow humans, gentle reminders that beneath our superhuman juggling acts, we’re all just trying to remember how to breathe. And sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is simply exhale and whisper “OK” to a universe that’s waiting for us to come back to ourselves.

A playlist with songs that remind me to return to my breath and simply be still – an evolving soundtrack for those moments when we need to reset (swaying or dancing included).

1. If you’re feeling particularly nerdy, dive into this article about the psychophysiology of the sigh. Or read more about how breathing techniques could be valuable tools for improving stress tolerance, enhancing focus, and regulating emotional states. ↩︎