The Can't-Sit-Still Breath for When Your Head Won't Quit
Not every bad moment calls for slow. Sometimes your head is going a hundred miles an hour and telling you to sit still and count to four feels like telling a dog not to bark at the mail truck. It doesn't land. You need something with a little more push to it first.
That's this one.
The move
Lion breath. I know how it sounds. Stick with me.
Breathe in through your nose, normal speed, nothing fancy. Then on the exhale, open your mouth wide, stick your tongue out toward your chin, and push the air out with some noise behind it. Not a scream. More like a growl, or a "haaa" with some shove on it. Your whole face gets involved. Eyes can go wide too if you're feeling it.
Do that four or five times.
That's the whole technique. It looks ridiculous and it works because it gives the wound-up part of you somewhere to go before you ask it to slow down. You can't skip straight from spinning to calm most days. This is the middle step.
Why this one and not the four-count first
My daughter Ruby, she's six, does this at the dinner table because it makes her sister Eliza laugh. Tongue out, big roar, everybody cracks up. That's not really what it's for, but I let it ride, because the exhale on it is correct even when the reason for doing it is "I want Eliza to spit out her milk."
Here's the actual reason it's in this class. Some days your body has energy in it that needs to leave before you can breathe your way down to calm. If your head won't quit, your body's usually keyed up too — jaw tight, shoulders up by your ears, foot going under the table. Jumping straight to a slow four-in, eight-out on that state is like trying to park a car that's still doing forty. You need to slow the car down first.
The lion breath is the brake before the parking. It's got force in it. You're not trying to be peaceful. You're getting the wound-up energy out through your mouth and your breath instead of through your fists or your mouth running at somebody else.
How to actually do it, step by step
- Stand or sit, doesn't matter. Kitchen, garage, truck if you're alone and won't scare anybody in the next lane.
- Breathe in through your nose.
- Open your mouth, tongue out, exhale with sound and some push behind it. Let your face do whatever it wants to do.
- Repeat four or five times.
- Then — and this part matters — go straight into a couple rounds of the regular four-count exhale we've already covered. In for four, out for eight, no sound needed, mouth closed if that's comfortable.
That handoff from lion breath to the slow breath is the actual technique. The roar gets the charge out. The slow breath is what settles you after. Skip the second half and you've just growled and gone right back to spinning.
The opinion I'll stand behind here
Everybody wants "clear your mind" advice and I think that's mostly a trap. Nobody clears their mind. Chasing an empty head just gives you one more thing to fail at, and now you're stressed about being stressed, which is worse. What actually works is giving your head one small, specific job. Count the breaths. Notice the roar. That's enough. You're not trying to think about nothing. You're trying to think about one thing on purpose instead of six things by accident.
A couple of real cautions
If you've got a sore throat, laryngitis, or anything going on with your voice, skip the sound part and just do the exhale motion quiet. No need to push through that.
Also — do this one somewhere you don't mind looking a little unhinged for ten seconds. I wouldn't do it mid-meeting. Bathroom, truck, garage, your own kitchen with the door shut. Ruby does hers at the table because she's six and doesn't care. You get to decide how much you care.
If it makes you lightheaded, back off the force behind it. Should feel like effort, not like you're about to pass out. That's a different problem and not one this breath is supposed to cause.
Before next time
Try it once this week when you catch yourself keyed up before you're actually mad about anything specific — waiting on hold, stuck in traffic at the point of the mountain, whatever. See if the roar-then-slow combo gets you down faster than the slow breath alone would've.