Slow breathing is also recommended for novices before public speaking, as it helps speakers overcome irrational physiological fear of facing people, the risk-taking shift is useful as it helps you speak more confidently, not more cautiously. Slow breathing can calm nerves quickly; bottom-up regulation: body tells brain “you’re safe”.
Slow breathing (in yoga: pranayama) instantly down-regulates your nervous system by boosting vagal tone and lowering sympathetic "fight-or-flight" activity. When your breath lengthens, it signals your brain that you are completely safe, dropping your heart rate and lowering blood pressure.
I first learned about this in the army, called "tactical breathing". I still consistently use this before public speaking or if I feel myself in a manic/stressed state of mind.
It doesn’t signal anything. Your heart rate drops because you’re inhaling less oxygen so your heart is like “we don’t need this high fi flow” and slows down blood flow to lower energy expenditure.
Lower energy state always wins unless chasing energy source.
Your confident ignorance motivated me to at least dig up some cursory research on this space, I hadn’t previously bothered because I live and breathe this stuff (pun not intended).
As a young impressionable, I set out to understand and overcome performance anxiety as someone who suffered from it. After some reading, one of my conclusions was that I should do the most stressful thing possible to understand stress better and develop physical tolerance to stress. This culminated in me signing up for a series of Muay Thai interclub fights because getting punched (or kicked) in the head while pushing your heart rate to ~200bpm is definitely up there for “stressful circumstances”.
Turns out breathing really helps in that situation too beyond just taking in more oxygen - relaxation is critical for both technical execution and strategic thinking.
Slow breathing also really helps with freediving - another hobby of mine that I dabble with that happens to involve going deep (no pun intended) on conscious relaxation.
But sure, it’s just you taking in oxygen to moderate your heart rate. Here are some papers I surfaced for you and others who are interested
Note that fast breathing doesn’t necessarily mean high oxygen uptake. Deep breaths result in higher oxygen uptake (since you spend less time just moving the same stale air up and down your airways), and deep breaths are usually easier to perform when breathing slowly.
I don't think this is necessary at all, anecdotal but I used to have terrible social anxiety and fear of public speaking but after putting myself through it for several rounds it just kind of clicked.
Eventually, your body learns to adapt and understand that this thing you dreaded isn't so bad after all
Maybe some do, but I've never needed it. Often I actually find public speaking easier than small groups. In a small group my brain is trying to "model" what each person is thinking about my talk, as the groups get larger that becomes impossible and I tend to relax and let go. I also find the energy in a larger setting is a useful feedback mechanism. I might toss a small joke out and see if the audience is engaged, or I will ask a question and get a show of hands. The more I engage the calmer I feel and the more enjoyable the experience is for me and my audience.
Exercise increases heart rate. The more we exercise, the more the heart gets used to that adrenergic stimulation. This decreases the number of receptors to sense adrenaline in the heart, so whenever adrenaline rises again into the system, like in public speaking, we can handle it much better.
But what a godsend propranolol has been for a contentious work situation causing extreme anxiety.
Wonderful to take ahead of a scheduled meeting that could have otherwise been an hour of physical panic that no rational thought (this will feel unimportant in a week, it's just job, etc etc) could quell.
also helped my chronic acid reflux/lpr but its more of diaphragmatic breathing. its backed by research.
using phones and laptops all day stuns your brain into shallow breathing all day.when i was kid i remember my dad taking naps in the afternoon and his belly moving up and down as he slept peacefully. i dont think anyone does that anymore.
i have a pet theory that this is what is driving high gastro cancers in young ppl.
Parasympathetic nervous activation increased risk-taking behavior? That's interesting/unexpected (at least to me). Also, this part caught my eye:
> The selective impact of prolonged exhalation breathing on reward responsiveness has important implications for clinical contexts, such as anxiety, panic disorder, and depression, given their distinct autonomic signatures and maladaptive reward processing. By enhancing cardiac parasympathetic modulation through prolonged exhalation techniques, individuals may restore reward processing, a valuable pathway for emotional recalibration. Prolonged exhalation harbors the potential for a low-cost, low-risk, easily applicable intervention to be incorporated into therapy or rehabilitation programs, especially to support pharmacological treatments.
I agree it's counterintuitive, but it makes sense when I think about how, for example, it's the least neurotic people who do high-risk activities like base jumping or mountain climbing. Fear drives you away from threatening things, lack of fear allows you to move toward them more comfortably.
In general yes, I do climbing and I can say I only do it when I feel no fear, no adrenalin rush. When I feel fear I stop, otherwise danger of accident.
But I know a base jumper .. and he only does the jumps if he feels the fear and his kick is to overcome it and feel the adrenalin rush.
I do a lot of BMX trail riding. Some trails can be quite dangerous, especially at high speed.
I can identify with this “adrenaline junkie” definition, with qualifications. It’s probably different for everyone, but for me it’s more about “playing the edge”. I’ve crashed badly in the past going over that edge, but my-oh-my is it beautiful to approach, and get as close as you can, and look into the abyss for a moment. When the fear becomes too much, you back off. Over time (and survivorship bias!) you grow to have an immense respect for that edge.
Now, when I (rarely) go past the edge, I’m not flying past it to my death, my approach was appropriately calculated to produce a recoverable step-down or at worst a minor side-fall. I haven’t gone over the handlebars in years.
I dont know what you mean by "neurotic", but my impression was that quite a lot of these have mental health issues. In some cases, the risk taking seemed more like hope for suicide in denial. And they tend to be difficult people with broken relationship.
I mean in the Big 5 personality model sense. Someone who is neurotic is sensitive, more prone to negative emotions including fear. Someone who is low in neuroticism is less fearful and sensitive on average. So for example you could put two people in the situation of being about to jump out of a plane and one would feel terrified for their life while the other would feel only mild apprehension.
EDIT: People are a complex blends of emotions and motivations, so you're certainly right that can be another explanation for the same observable behavior. I really liked the comment about adrenaline junkies too. My point was only that on average it's low-sensitivity people who engage in those sorts of activities. Scaredy cats like myself stay home and read a good book.
Yes, it's weird. It's like the authors did the experiments, analysed them, understood that their research suggested that slow breathing was having the exact opposite effect of all that the psuedoscience/wellness/psychobabble community have assumed ...
... and then just ran with "yay, slow breathing!! Transformative, amirite??"
And sure, "transformative" is not technically incorrect. But the linguistic implications of that word are almost always positive/beneficial, whereas in this case the transformation is overwhelmingly negative.
At best, the manuscript's language is sloppy; at worst, it's misleading. Very odd. The finding that this technique is actually bad in most cases (every situation where additional risk-taking behaviour is bad) is so interesting. Odd that they almost try to cover it up.
Yeah, I was expecting some sort of "slow breathing produces calmness/more considered behavior" conclusion. But, the exact opposite? Everyone knows what party monsters those zen meditators are? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“If you feel jealous, talk about it, then we’ll figure something out”
In which one of the children wants the other one’s cool toy so the parent’s response is to encourage them to ask for it to be shared. Except they aren’t siblings and it’s the mom from the other family teaching their own jealous kid to go ask.
How about this?: Back off cat family, you fair weather commies — that’s Daniel’s bubble wand, not yours. At least share some of your own crap before asking for someone else’s:
”If you feel jealous: shut the fuck up, you can’t just have someone else’s stuff nor should you feel entitled to guilt them into sharing it just because you asked nicely.”
I mean Daniel Tiger in general just makes me cringe, it's just so extremely American. Absolutely zero stakes, all problems are resolved perfectly within literal seconds. Nothing is left "unfinished", never dares to leave the conflict unresolved for any meaningful amount of time. It's just such a stark contrast to, say, Peppa Pig, where the message is basically always some form of "shit is going to happen, find ways to deal with it." In DT, it is more of a papering over. Almost gaslighting. DT is not allowed to be upset that his birthday cake gets completely smashed? What? That is a healthy and normal response.
I agree with the "extremely American", but the not getting upset is just also an extremely American adoption of elite mannerisms at all levels of society. Publically showing emotion is considered vulgar and low-class in many cultures.
All cultures have an elite segment. Elite segments are comprised of individuals who are generally well in control of their emotions and reasonably afraid of individuals who cannot control their emotions.
I've found breathing exercises to be effective for the duration of the exercise, but I'm more interested in the possibility of training myself to adjust my respiration patterns over sustained durations. Would it be beneficial -- or even possible at all -- to adjust my body's default/subconscious breathing patterns to match those mentioned in the article?
Tangentially related, are there any wearable devices that allow for high resolution respiration monitoring? I'm imagining some measurement of lung expansion over time (probably at least 10 Hz) so that I can quantify the deepness/shallowness of my breaths as well as the phase of inhalation/exhalation cycles.
Anectata, but I found that active wearables can help with initial motivation, but long term they become chore or even stressful when forced. I use them only for passive long trends tracking.
Our brains trick us to breath on defaults adjusted to our surroundings.
I have read that skilled mindfulness practitioners maintain constant awareness of their breathing pattern throughout all other waking activities. Something to aspire to perhaps.
There's also a level above that, where you're aware of what is aware. I find this mental state to be even more calming/grounding than being aware of breathing but I'm not always able to shift myself into it. Being aware of breathing feels much easier/natural to me whenever I'm able to remind myself of it, which already provides quite a noticeable effect on how I'm feeling and reacting to whatever is happening in that moment.
Additionally, there's a practice called "walking meditation" [0] that can also be useful to practice this area of skills.
Finally I understand why meditation hippies kinda seem aloof when you talk to them. Turns out they are trying to multi-task some kind of awarenessmaxxing while speaking to you. The more you know!
I always thought that was part of their weirdness and maybe even some personality trait that led them to this sort of thing, but knowing it's an active choice makes it even weirder somehow.
Sometimes it is great to stomp on people’s lines but slowing down your responses half a beat is beneficial in most situations. There is often a first mover disadvantage.
I think it is helpful to practice autonomic control throughout the day. If you are riding the bus or sitting in a circle or doing this or that and you have the spare bandwidth to think about it. It becomes a habit.
People don’t like anxious people so it is part of charisma development like you do training for spiritual leadership or relational healing. Less anxiety means more tolerance for risk, ambiguity, etc. it is not “put it all on 7“
Awareness of breathing does not mean controlling your breathing, it just means noticing the sensations associated with it. Breathing can be incredibly pleasant!
> Would it be beneficial -- or even possible at all -- to adjust my body's default/subconscious breathing patterns to match those mentioned in the article?
Common physical reflexes, autonomous responses, and subconscious regulation, are there as aids to us. The fact that they are not universally beneficial is one of the purposes of having higher level control. Not to universally suppress responses, but to notice and cope when they misfire.
It would be interesting to have a map of breathing patterns across a wide variety of situations, to identify the range of situations where prolonged exhalation is adaptive.
My guess, based on the common reflexes of mouth clamping and breath holding before great physical exertion, is that prolonged exhalation is part of an adaptive psychological orchestrator for when we prepare to take on something difficult, risky (but necessary), or that needs a fast strong response.
Our fast acting emotions, and slower acting moods, are similar guides. Patterns of stimulus and response from our baseline physiology and psychological, that we absorb into our higher level operation, as generalized guides for analogous responses to contexts at higher abstraction levels.
With minor maladaptive responses inevitable, if we don't pay attention. And severe maladaptive responses often ingrained as overcompensation for situational or developmental traumas.
The craziest thing I noticed about a breathing pattern and risk taking was when a murderer was in an interrogation room with a police officer when after they couldn't find his gun; he had stowed it on his ankle. The suspect took a deep inhale after reaching for his gun while the officer was focused on the computer screen in front of him, exhaled and swiftly aimed at the officers temple and fired. Then he broke out of custody and was caught shortly after.
Also try to make decisions ahead of time too. E.g. figure out what your opinion is before the meeting. Think like a pilot, don't let the plane do something you hadn't anticipated 5 minutes before (or in case of life 5 days 5 weeks 5 months or sometimes 5 years!)
Cant do this for everything but examples are supermarket lists, home viewing (know your price, questions, decision criteria)
Weren't 90s of deep breathing supposed to remove all cortisol in the blood? This seems like an opposite result. Also a single prolonged breath was supposed to reset autonomic nervous system. Which research should I trust now?
The title is inaccurate. The results are not about any kind of deep breathing or slow breathing.
The results are specifically about a breathing that is slower due to prolonged exhalation.
This kind of breathing is one of the many kinds of breathing traditionally practiced in yoga and also in many Asian martial arts, each kind for different purposes.
The experiments used in TFA have used a breathing rhythm of 2-second inhalation with 8-second exhalation, which is about the same as how I learned this kind of breathing as a child, from a yoga manual.
I have never heard about a single breathing of any kind to have much effect. For any kind of breathing rhythm you may need to use it from a large fraction of a minute up to a few minutes to have a noticeable effect.
As explained in TFA, this particular kind of breathing rhythm changes the balance between the 2 components of the autonomic nervous system, in favor of the parasympathetic nervous system.
This has the effect to diminish the influence that fear has on making decisions.
TFA is interesting because it provides a scientific confirmation about the usefulness of this kind of breathing rhythm, which has been traditionally used for centuries, if not even for millennia, in India, China and other Asian countries.
I've been practicing coherent breathing (6 breaths/min, equal inhalation and exhalation) to help with anxiety. I'm mostly going off a study[1] where participants who practiced coherent breathing 20 mins a day reported significantly improved outcomes weeks later.
Does anyone have advice about HRV specifically within the context of anxiety?
I've been measuring my SDNN using a Polar strap, and it hasn't really budged. However, I'm not taking that too seriously. I think my HRV is already fairly good because I bike. Anecdotally, I think the coherent breathing helps, especially if I _remember to do it in stressful moments_, not just in the morning.
As demonstrated in an older article cited in the parent article, at the same pace of 6 breaths/min it matters a lot which is the ratio between the exhalation time and the inhalation time.
In the experiments, slow inhalation with fast exhalation was never helpful, equal inhalation and exhalation was helpful only in certain circumstances and fast inhalation with slow exhalation (i.e. 2-second inhalation followed by 8-second exhalation) was always efficient in stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system and inhibiting the sympathetic nervous system.
The results from TFA are specifically for fast inhalation and slow exhalation, not for slow breathing in general.
The negative results from the article linked by you are perfectly consistent with the other results, which showed that equal inhalation and exhalation was useful only in certain circumstances, which were not tested in the article linked by you.
In general, slow breathing by fast inhalation and slow exhalation (or any other kind of slow breathing) does not have effects when you are already relaxed and having nothing to worry about, but only when you are stressed, either by anticipating that something bad will happen or while something bad is actually happening.
Slowed breathing with longer exhales makes a noticeable (5-10 bpm) decrease in HR during endurance bike rides. It’s interesting seeing it happen when the power output is the same.
i developed a health issue that has affected my breathing over the past few years and i am cognitively and emotionally destroyed, it has made me realize that breathing is really important
You can practice regulating exhale rate in a pool or bath by blowing bubbles. I find it helps with freediving exercises where you fix the number of breaths in between reps.
Many of the greatest achievements in science & engineering were accomplished during wartime under intense stress or obsession - not a relaxed parasympathetic state.
That alone should make us skeptical of simplistic claims that calmer physiological states are inherently "more optimal" for complex cognition.
My take about athletic performance is that it is good to be relaxed up until the moment you need to act. Even when I play Beat Saber multiplayer I think it is a mistake to be waving your arms around at the beginning or during pauses because fatigue builds up through the level. Eustress is phasic rather than tonic.
Even outside wartime great accomplishments come through obsession though, but I would say that the people who “make it” in academia are the ones who are kinda sanguine about the family business as opposed to the driven outsiders.
The finding certainly chimes with my experience. A few deep breaths each with a slow release taking up to around twelve seconds almost always lowers my blood pressure sometimes by as much as 10 points with the attendant calmness thrown in. Although the BP effect is temporary, by habitually doing it, my BP even drops on a semi-permanent basis. Reports on this routine abound. If the goal here can be achieved, those with a BP problem will immediately appreciate the upside of this approach.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12858147/
Lower energy state always wins unless chasing energy source.
As a young impressionable, I set out to understand and overcome performance anxiety as someone who suffered from it. After some reading, one of my conclusions was that I should do the most stressful thing possible to understand stress better and develop physical tolerance to stress. This culminated in me signing up for a series of Muay Thai interclub fights because getting punched (or kicked) in the head while pushing your heart rate to ~200bpm is definitely up there for “stressful circumstances”.
Turns out breathing really helps in that situation too beyond just taking in more oxygen - relaxation is critical for both technical execution and strategic thinking.
Slow breathing also really helps with freediving - another hobby of mine that I dabble with that happens to involve going deep (no pun intended) on conscious relaxation.
But sure, it’s just you taking in oxygen to moderate your heart rate. Here are some papers I surfaced for you and others who are interested
[0] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aan1466
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aai7984
[2] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...
Eventually, your body learns to adapt and understand that this thing you dreaded isn't so bad after all
Maybe some do, but I've never needed it. Often I actually find public speaking easier than small groups. In a small group my brain is trying to "model" what each person is thinking about my talk, as the groups get larger that becomes impossible and I tend to relax and let go. I also find the energy in a larger setting is a useful feedback mechanism. I might toss a small joke out and see if the audience is engaged, or I will ask a question and get a show of hands. The more I engage the calmer I feel and the more enjoyable the experience is for me and my audience.
Exercise increases heart rate. The more we exercise, the more the heart gets used to that adrenergic stimulation. This decreases the number of receptors to sense adrenaline in the heart, so whenever adrenaline rises again into the system, like in public speaking, we can handle it much better.
Exercise mitigates public-speaking anxiety. Particularly prolonged cardio.
But what a godsend propranolol has been for a contentious work situation causing extreme anxiety.
Wonderful to take ahead of a scheduled meeting that could have otherwise been an hour of physical panic that no rational thought (this will feel unimportant in a week, it's just job, etc etc) could quell.
using phones and laptops all day stuns your brain into shallow breathing all day.when i was kid i remember my dad taking naps in the afternoon and his belly moving up and down as he slept peacefully. i dont think anyone does that anymore.
i have a pet theory that this is what is driving high gastro cancers in young ppl.
> The selective impact of prolonged exhalation breathing on reward responsiveness has important implications for clinical contexts, such as anxiety, panic disorder, and depression, given their distinct autonomic signatures and maladaptive reward processing. By enhancing cardiac parasympathetic modulation through prolonged exhalation techniques, individuals may restore reward processing, a valuable pathway for emotional recalibration. Prolonged exhalation harbors the potential for a low-cost, low-risk, easily applicable intervention to be incorporated into therapy or rehabilitation programs, especially to support pharmacological treatments.
But I know a base jumper .. and he only does the jumps if he feels the fear and his kick is to overcome it and feel the adrenalin rush.
This sentence has beautifully crystallised the meaning of what it means to be an adrenalin junkie ^_^
I can identify with this “adrenaline junkie” definition, with qualifications. It’s probably different for everyone, but for me it’s more about “playing the edge”. I’ve crashed badly in the past going over that edge, but my-oh-my is it beautiful to approach, and get as close as you can, and look into the abyss for a moment. When the fear becomes too much, you back off. Over time (and survivorship bias!) you grow to have an immense respect for that edge.
Now, when I (rarely) go past the edge, I’m not flying past it to my death, my approach was appropriately calculated to produce a recoverable step-down or at worst a minor side-fall. I haven’t gone over the handlebars in years.
EDIT: People are a complex blends of emotions and motivations, so you're certainly right that can be another explanation for the same observable behavior. I really liked the comment about adrenaline junkies too. My point was only that on average it's low-sensitivity people who engage in those sorts of activities. Scaredy cats like myself stay home and read a good book.
... and then just ran with "yay, slow breathing!! Transformative, amirite??"
And sure, "transformative" is not technically incorrect. But the linguistic implications of that word are almost always positive/beneficial, whereas in this case the transformation is overwhelmingly negative.
At best, the manuscript's language is sloppy; at worst, it's misleading. Very odd. The finding that this technique is actually bad in most cases (every situation where additional risk-taking behaviour is bad) is so interesting. Odd that they almost try to cover it up.
“If you feel jealous, talk about it, then we’ll figure something out”
In which one of the children wants the other one’s cool toy so the parent’s response is to encourage them to ask for it to be shared. Except they aren’t siblings and it’s the mom from the other family teaching their own jealous kid to go ask.
How about this?: Back off cat family, you fair weather commies — that’s Daniel’s bubble wand, not yours. At least share some of your own crap before asking for someone else’s:
”If you feel jealous: shut the fuck up, you can’t just have someone else’s stuff nor should you feel entitled to guilt them into sharing it just because you asked nicely.”
Slightly tongue-in-cheek. Slightly.
Tangentially related, are there any wearable devices that allow for high resolution respiration monitoring? I'm imagining some measurement of lung expansion over time (probably at least 10 Hz) so that I can quantify the deepness/shallowness of my breaths as well as the phase of inhalation/exhalation cycles.
Our brains trick us to breath on defaults adjusted to our surroundings.
What I have found working to slow down breath is:
1st willful exercise repetition,
2nd changing surrounding environment and lifestyle (nature, decluttwring, idleness, peaceful eating, proper sleep)
3rd gaining awareness about trigger mechanisms (overcommitments, overexpectations)
It is all self-regulating. And pretty much what mindfulnes, meditation, prayer or forest walk brings.
Additionally, there's a practice called "walking meditation" [0] that can also be useful to practice this area of skills.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_meditation
I always thought that was part of their weirdness and maybe even some personality trait that led them to this sort of thing, but knowing it's an active choice makes it even weirder somehow.
People don’t like anxious people so it is part of charisma development like you do training for spiritual leadership or relational healing. Less anxiety means more tolerance for risk, ambiguity, etc. it is not “put it all on 7“
Remember to blink!
Common physical reflexes, autonomous responses, and subconscious regulation, are there as aids to us. The fact that they are not universally beneficial is one of the purposes of having higher level control. Not to universally suppress responses, but to notice and cope when they misfire.
It would be interesting to have a map of breathing patterns across a wide variety of situations, to identify the range of situations where prolonged exhalation is adaptive.
My guess, based on the common reflexes of mouth clamping and breath holding before great physical exertion, is that prolonged exhalation is part of an adaptive psychological orchestrator for when we prepare to take on something difficult, risky (but necessary), or that needs a fast strong response.
Our fast acting emotions, and slower acting moods, are similar guides. Patterns of stimulus and response from our baseline physiology and psychological, that we absorb into our higher level operation, as generalized guides for analogous responses to contexts at higher abstraction levels.
With minor maladaptive responses inevitable, if we don't pay attention. And severe maladaptive responses often ingrained as overcompensation for situational or developmental traumas.
You say fear is good, presumably because it stops you from doing things you don't know are dangerous.
But then you say you can do a technique to defeat fear when you know the fear is irrational.
But your argument starts from the premise that you don't know a situation is dangerous or not without the fear so how would you know it's irrational?
In my experience it's the opposite, most fear is not useful.
Cant do this for everything but examples are supermarket lists, home viewing (know your price, questions, decision criteria)
The results are specifically about a breathing that is slower due to prolonged exhalation.
This kind of breathing is one of the many kinds of breathing traditionally practiced in yoga and also in many Asian martial arts, each kind for different purposes.
The experiments used in TFA have used a breathing rhythm of 2-second inhalation with 8-second exhalation, which is about the same as how I learned this kind of breathing as a child, from a yoga manual.
I have never heard about a single breathing of any kind to have much effect. For any kind of breathing rhythm you may need to use it from a large fraction of a minute up to a few minutes to have a noticeable effect.
As explained in TFA, this particular kind of breathing rhythm changes the balance between the 2 components of the autonomic nervous system, in favor of the parasympathetic nervous system.
This has the effect to diminish the influence that fear has on making decisions.
TFA is interesting because it provides a scientific confirmation about the usefulness of this kind of breathing rhythm, which has been traditionally used for centuries, if not even for millennia, in India, China and other Asian countries.
Does anyone have advice about HRV specifically within the context of anxiety?
I've been measuring my SDNN using a Polar strap, and it hasn't really budged. However, I'm not taking that too seriously. I think my HRV is already fairly good because I bike. Anecdotally, I think the coherent breathing helps, especially if I _remember to do it in stressful moments_, not just in the morning.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10719279/
In the experiments, slow inhalation with fast exhalation was never helpful, equal inhalation and exhalation was helpful only in certain circumstances and fast inhalation with slow exhalation (i.e. 2-second inhalation followed by 8-second exhalation) was always efficient in stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system and inhibiting the sympathetic nervous system.
The results from TFA are specifically for fast inhalation and slow exhalation, not for slow breathing in general.
The negative results from the article linked by you are perfectly consistent with the other results, which showed that equal inhalation and exhalation was useful only in certain circumstances, which were not tested in the article linked by you.
In general, slow breathing by fast inhalation and slow exhalation (or any other kind of slow breathing) does not have effects when you are already relaxed and having nothing to worry about, but only when you are stressed, either by anticipating that something bad will happen or while something bad is actually happening.
its when the tmj sorta dissolves and ur jaw/facial structure collapses as a result. now my airway is like a millimeter
https://www.aolresearch.org/published-research
mindfulness and meditation have been seeing broad adoption - with apps like headspace etc also getting good traction
The idiocy of thinking calmness leading to optimal results. Usually this comes from people who never accomplished anything.
The paper is the prime example of pseudo science masquerading as science.
That alone should make us skeptical of simplistic claims that calmer physiological states are inherently "more optimal" for complex cognition.
Even outside wartime great accomplishments come through obsession though, but I would say that the people who “make it” in academia are the ones who are kinda sanguine about the family business as opposed to the driven outsiders.