Six Breaths a Minute

You've been told to breathe and it sounded like a brush-off. The specific protocol — slow, paced, about six breaths a minute — is not.

What the researchers actually did

Laborde and colleagues systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed controlled trials of slow-paced breathing, examining effects on vagally mediated heart-rate variability and on self-reported stress and anxiety.

What they found

• Slow-paced breathing increased vagally mediated heart-rate variability.
• Self-reported stress and anxiety decreased.
• Short, repeated sessions outperformed rare long ones.
• The effect showed up in healthy adults, not only clinical groups.

What it means for you

Heart-rate variability is a proxy for how fast you recover from stress — and recovery speed, not stress avoidance, is the realistic target for a woman with a full life.

What to do with it this week

• Four seconds in, six seconds out, five minutes, once a day.
• Do it at the same daily trigger — after parking, before dinner.
• Use it immediately after the stressor, not hours later.
• Two weeks before judging it.