Alternate-nostril breathing

1. Sit upright and relax your shoulders. Rest your left hand in your lap.
2. Pick 1, 3 or 5 minutes and press Start. The glowing side is the open one.
3. Close your right nostril with your thumb and breathe in through the left. Close the left with your ring finger, open the right, and breathe out.
4. Breathe in through the right, swap, and breathe out through the left. That is one round. Keep it slow and easy, never forced.

In a study of 50 healthy men, people made fewer errors on a visual task after alternate-nostril breathing without breath holds. It did not lower how anxious they felt: plain breath awareness and sitting quietly did that instead (Telles et al., 2019 (opens in a new tab)). In another small study, 15 men had slightly lower blood pressure after 15 minutes, and were quicker on an attention task, but so were people who just sat quietly (Telles et al., 2017 (opens in a new tab)).

You may read that it "balances the two sides of the brain". A small brain-wave study found no change in that balance (Telles et al., 2017 (opens in a new tab)). We think of it as a slow, steady breath with something for your hands to do, which helps some people stay with it.

A review of 58 studies found that breathing practices worked better in sessions of five minutes or more, and that most of the studies were not very strong (Bentley et al., 2023 (opens in a new tab)). Treat one or three minutes as a taster.

• When your head feels busy and you want to slow down, before study, sleep or a hard conversation.
• As a calm few minutes between two tasks or two matches.
• Not with a blocked or sore nose. Stop and breathe normally if you feel light-headed.

This is a self-help practice, not medical advice. If anxiety is affecting your daily life, talk to a doctor.