If you have anxiety or if you’re stressed before an important event, falling asleep and staying asleep might be a problem. Try this to calm down your nerves and get some good rest.
It’s called the ‘4-7-8’ method. This is what you need to do:
1. Breathe calmly through your nose for 4 seconds.
2. Hold your breath for 7 seconds.
3. Breathe out slowly through your mouth for 8 seconds.
It’s really that simple. It may sound crazy, but it really works.
How it works
This is what I found out about how it works. When you’re stressed or anxious, the amount of adrenaline in your blood increases, and your breathing gets faster and lighter. This breathing exercise acts as a kind of sedative. Deliberately slowing down your breathing in this way forces the rhythm of your heart to slow down, making you calm very quickly; it’s simple physiology!
The same exercise helps to calm down your mind, too, simply because it makes you concentrate entirely on your breathing. You don’t realize it, but at this moment your central nervous system gradually reduces its activity, and feelings of anxiety disappear. Any neurologist can confirm this for you.
The result is that your whole body relaxes. In terms of the speed and strength of the physical effect it has, the exercise is similar to an anaesthetic. It was investigated by Harvard medical doctor Andrew Weil, who found that the ‘4-7-8’ method has been well-known to Indian yogi for several centuries. They use it during meditation practice in order to achieve a state of complete relaxation. It’s safe to say, therefore, that it’s completely harmless.