The patterns

How do I do the physiological sigh?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20264 sources

Breathe in through your nose, then sip in a little more air on top to fill your lungs. Let it all out slowly through your mouth, taking longer than both sips together. One or two will settle you in the moment. Five minutes a day of them is the practice that did best in a month-long trial.

The name makes it sound like a special technique from a lab. It’s something you already do. Researchers at UCLA put the average at about one sigh every five minutes, around 12 an hour, without you deciding to. The physiological sigh is that same double breath in and long breath out, done on purpose. Done over and over for five minutes, the trial called it cyclic sighing.

Step by step

1. Sit or lie down. Breathe in slowly through your nose until your lungs feel mostly full.
2. Without breathing out, take a second, shorter sip of air through your nose to top them up.
3. Breathe out slowly through your mouth, all the way, until your lungs feel empty.
4. Rest for a moment and repeat. For a practice, keep going for five minutes.

The second sip is supposed to be shorter. The trial’s own instructions say it’s normal for it to be briefer than the first. If breathing out through your mouth feels odd, the trial allowed doing it all through the nose.

The timer below paces it at 3 seconds in, a 1 second sip, and 6 seconds out, which is six breaths a minute. The people in the trial set their own pace, so treat our counts as a starting point and slow down if you feel lightheaded.

Why it calms you

Your heart speeds up a little on every breath in and slows on every breath out. A long out-breath gives it longer on the slowing side. In the sigh, the out-breath is longer than both sips together. It’s the same breath you let out when you finally put down a heavy bag.

What the trial found

In 2023, Stanford researchers (Andrew Huberman and David Spiegel were the senior authors) had 108 adults do five minutes a day for 28 days of cyclic sighing, box breathing, fast breathing with a hold, or mindfulness meditation. Cyclic sighing was the only one that lifted good mood clearly more than meditation. It also slowed people’s breathing rate the most, and the more days they did it, the more they got from it.

Anxiety fell about the same in every group. The groups were small (30 people did cyclic sighing), and the authors call the study exploratory.

The sigh in your brain

In 2016 a UCLA and Stanford team found the small group of brain cells that triggers sighs in mice. Their paper describes sighs as happening every few minutes, from several an hour in people to dozens an hour in rodents.

For anxiety, see which breathing exercise is best for anxiety. For the reason the long out-breath works, see why does a long exhale calm you down.

Cyclic sighing has the sigh your body already does on its own, the trials and who should skip it.