Ruining Christmas is easy. Every year, all over the nation, Kiwis are shocked by how annoying their relatives are. Spending recreational time with the people we love pushes us over the limit. We plan holidays, Christmas lunches, family visits, camping or road trips. We take the time and put in the work to make it happen. We may even be looking forward to it. But it only takes someone arriving two hours late for lunch or spouting half-arse politics, and it all becomes stressful. Happy times turn into infuriating hellscapes. It shouldn’t be like this. Working is for stress. Your time off should be relaxing. There is, however, a simple way to ease the pressure on the spot. A little trick that will calm everything down no matter what your friends, family and the world are saying and doing. A biological reset button that will allow you to get on with enjoying the festive and holiday season. It’s also so obvious it seems silly to bring it up. When things get stressful, a big suck into the lungs, with another short one at the end, followed by a massive exhale, will sort you out. This simple act might just be enough to stop your end-of-year/Christmas break from descending into anger, discontent and pain. Perform this type of breathing three times in a row and no amount of annoying family activity will get to you. It may be a simple and cliche thing to do, but it is also backed by science.
Earlier this year, a Stanford Medicine study, co-led by buff superstar neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew D Huberman, looked into ways we humans can rapidly reduce stress whenever and wherever it rises. They wanted to find a technique that people could use in day-to-day life. There are thousands of tools out there to combat stress, but most of them take time. You can meditate, eat better, nurture quality social connections, and have a drink with friends. As effective as these are, they need to be organised; you have to step away from the activity that’s currently stressing you out. You can’t suddenly book a four-day stress-relieving retreat while you are in the middle of a stress-inducing conversation with an extended family member who knows nothing about anything but is punishing you with their opinion on the latest social media-induced political talking points. You can’t have a relaxing drink with friends while driving a camper van full of kids down the West Coast of the South Island.
Huberman’s team focused on a type of breathing called the ‘physiological sigh’, which was first discovered in the 1930s. It’s an automatic double inhale plus an exhale that works to reduce high levels of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. We sometimes do this when we are sleeping. Dogs instinctively do it. Dr Huberman and his mates found that purposely performing the ‘physiological sigh’ lowers stress rapidly. As he describes in his podcast. “It’s a double inhale, and typically the first inhale longer than the second and then a very long, extended exhale”
The second little sniff at the end is key. Our lungs aren’t two big gas bags like we might imagine. They are made up of millions of little sacks. If they were ripped out of you and laid out, they would cover the surface area of a netball court. These tiny bags are there to intake oxygen but also to offload carbon dioxide. The second inhalation at the end of the big one makes sure all the sacks that might have deflated are full. As a result, you expel more carbon dioxide when you breathe out. This rapid offloading of all that extra carbon dioxide lowers stress.
Most of us allow tensions to take over from time to time. We don’t have to. This Christmas and summer holidays if you find yourself around a table listening to a Dunning Kruger-affected relative catastrophizing about the latest fashion cause, or if a brother-in-law won’t shut up with the BBQ tips or you take the wrong off-ramp, just take a big breath and then a little one and let it all out. It doesn’t sound like much - but it really works.
