Upgrade to Relaxation Breathe Technique

Tonight’s episode breaks down a simple sleep technique from Dr. Michael Breus: breathe in for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8, and use your fingers to count each round so your mind does not spiral into tracking or overthinking. This is not about forcing your heart rate to hit a perfect number. It is about giving your nervous system a clear signal that it is safe to slow down. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to Night Shift with Justin S. King, How to Transform Your Life One Night at a Time. Tonight I'm going to be sharing with you an upgrade to a simple breathing technique, which I've discussed in the past. And that is the relaxation breath or the 4-7-8 breathing technique. And this upgrade comes to you, courtesy of Dr. Bruce on the School of Greatness podcast. So in the past, I discussed how you're going to breathe in through your nose for the count of four, hold for the count of seven, and exhale through your mouth through the count of eight. And on the pack the podcast, there was discussed a way to sort of upgrade this. Specifically, if you are waking up around between 1 and 3 a.m. in the morning and want to fall back to sleep, this is what Dr. Bruce does. He first off, the reason for this breath is to lower your heart rate. And so he's he does this breath, but he adds in counting on his fingers because he he recommends to his patients that you do this for 20 cycles. But if you're breathing in bed on your back and you forget how many you've done, you start to ruminate in your brain, he says. So he adds counting on one hand, on two hands, and then when you get to 10, you reverse it. And he says he'll typically fall asleep before he finishes the 20 count. And he adds one other thing, and that is picturing the numbers that you are counting. So as you count in, as you breathe in, you're going to be picturing the number of each second. You'll see the number one, two, three, four, hold to the count of seven and exhale to the count of eight, but you're also adding the picture of seeing the numbers in your head. One thing he said is when he first started doing this, he couldn't actually hold his breath for the count of seven. So if you're in that circumstance, you're going to just decrease everything by, you know, you can go to three, five, seven, holding your breath, or three, four, five. But if you don't have a problem holding your breath for seven seconds, stick with the inhale four seconds, hold for seven, and exhale for eight. So adding the finger counting and imagining the numbers, second numbers, the counts in your head while it's going down. Because as you imagine the number, you can't be thinking about anything else. So just a simple upgrade from the 478 breathing principle. Try that tonight as you're falling off to sleep, or if you wake up in the middle of the night. That's it for tonight's episode of Night Shift. My name is Justin S. King. Now entrepreneurs find peace tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives through sleep optimization, emotion regulation, and discovering their purpose. Good night.