Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)

This is what the advice that people give.

Just take three deep breaths.

That doesn't work.

Because three deep breaths in an anxious state will still be shallow.

You'll go... You'll do three deep breaths.

But those deep breaths are not... You kind of run through them so quickly that there's enough momentum in the mind for the anxiety to continue.

The goal of 10 second breaths in and out is that it demands your attention.

You must concentrate it.

You must focus on it to succeed.

It doesn't happen automatically.

It isn't easy to do.

So what we want to do is give ourselves a task that requires and demands cognitive attention.

The reason that we want to use breathing as opposed to other things is that when we have very slow exhalations and we have slow breaths in and slow breaths out, what will actually happen is our respiratory rate is normally 12 to 14.

Once we decrease our respiratory rate to three, it will change our oxygenation level.

It'll change our carbon dioxide level.

And as these things change, it will activate our nervous system in a different way.

So you're sort of triggering vagus nerve activation, which is going to slow you down.

So then that sort of works on the physiological level.

So there is a cognitive level where if I am concentrating, I can't be anxious anymore.

And we also want to use a technique, ideally, that will trigger our physiology.