What Is the 4-7-8 Breathing Technique, and How Does It Help With Sleep?
“It helps to regulate your physiology,” she says. “It can help slow you down, ground you, and bring you back to the present.”This can be especially helpful if you feel like your mind starts to race when you try to settle down for sleep, Gallagher says. “It really allows you to come back to the moment, re-calibrate, reassess and pull you out of a mental spiral that you may be having,” she says.
Doing breathing exercises like the 4-7-8 technique can also facilitate chemical changes in your body, says Hillary Ammon, Psy.D., clinical psychologist at the. “Often when people are experiencing anxiety, worry, or stress, they are releasing stress hormones, including cortisol,” she says. “These chemical changes are sending signals to your body that there is a threat in front of you, causing you to feel keyed up or restless.
“Anything can be used to calm people down—decorate your dream house in your mind, plan a trip, imagine sitting with a deceased person who is dear to you and the two of you having a conversation, or relive a memory you had with them,” he says. “I had a patient who went through the steps of making banana bread and her husband visualized playing his favorite golf course. There are lots of ways to relax and focus your mental energy elsewhere.
Light reading or doing a puzzle can also help settle your mind, Dr. Waters says. “When your eyes are moving, but you stop processing what you are reading, it's time to shut off the lights and move to bed,” she says. Then, if you want to use breathing techniques, it can be helpful to use them here. If you happen to wake up in the middle of the night, Dr. Gehrman says you can also try the breathing technique at that point.
Dr. Winters just recommends not relying on the 4-7-8 technique alone to help you sleep. “It’s fine, but it's no miracle,” he says. “It’s just a way to be mindful of breathing which is relaxing and calming for some. “The miracle technique that will have you asleep in 60 seconds”? Probably not, but it’s certainly not harmful to try.
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