Meditation Breathing Exercises for Beginners: How to Reduce Stress

We rarely think about breathing—after all, it would be hard to manually breathe all the time. However, a lot of meditation breathing exercises are great practices to reduce stress and anxiety. They are easy to start, and can be performed anywhere. Master your breathing, starting today!

What Exactly Are Breathing Exercises?

Breath-work definition is pretty simple. It’s a practice of intentionally controlling your breath in order to relax, calm your mind and body. This can take a form of standalone technique or part of mindfulness exercises like meditation or yoga.

Why should you be interested in breath-work? Because they offer a lot of benefits for our mental and physical health.

For example:

• Reduced stress and anxieties;
• Calming your mind;
• Better focus;
• Relaxing tensed muscles.

Of course, the benefits may vary from person to person. The more experience you get with meditation breathing exercises, the more you gain from them. You can also focus stronger on certain aspects of breath-work that you are interested in.

What Is the 3-3-3 Breathing Technique?

One of the simplest breath-works is 3-3-3 exercise. Basically, it comes down to:

• Taking a deep breath for 3 seconds;
• Holding it for 3 seconds;
• Exhaling for 3 seconds.

Three seconds are great, because almost everybody can do it without any preparations. You also don’t need previous experience. What’s more: that kind of mindfulness breathing can be performed everywhere.

Once you get more experienced, prolong the steps. Try 4-4-4 or 5-5-5. It’s a great tool to calm down when you are nervous, stressed or angry.

5-5-5: Easy to Learn, Hard to Master

You can find two examples of 5-5-5. The first one is the same as 3-3-3 I’ve just described, with prolonged steps. The other one is similar, but a little bit different.

You remove the part about holding your breath. Instead, you inhale for 5 seconds and after a small pause (1 second or less) you exhale for 5 seconds. You do it 5 times in a row, working your way up to 5 minutes of breath work.

While similar to 3-3-3, it might be a little easier for some to not hold one’s breath. In the end, it’s up to you which practice you prefer.

Or maybe you want to mix them up? Feel free to experiment!

The Power of Natural Breath: 4-2-6 Mindful Breathing

This one is a little harder than the previous ones. Why? Because during breath-work exercises, we tend to prefer symmetric time intervals. At least—that’s speaking from my experience. So why should you try the 4-2-6- technique?

Mostly due to the fact that physiologically speaking, the exhalation is a little longer than the inhale. Thus, the 4-2-6 method might be more natural for our body.

You perform it similarly to 3-3-3:

• Take a deep breath for 4 seconds;
• Hold it for 2 seconds;
• Exhale for 6 seconds.

If it is too long for you, you can shorten it. But stay as close as possible to the proportion. So if you want to make it shorter, you can inhale for 2 seconds, hold for 1 second and exhale for 3 seconds.

This technique is a little harder for most beginners than the previous ones. However, it is definitely worth trying. A longer exhale is a natural signal for your body to relax.

Use it whenever you feel stressed or anxious!

Belly-Abdominal Breathing: Basis for Breath-Work

Meditation breathing exercises are great, no matter which one you choose. However, none of them will be truly effective if you don’t learn how to take deep breaths. As you’ve probably noticed, I mention them quite often!

The question remains: what exactly is deep breathing?

It’s learning how to breathe from the diaphragm. Also called belly or abdominal breathing, it encourages deep inhales with full oxygen exchange.

You can learn it by following the steps below:

1. Lie on your back on a flat surface (bed, carpet, or my favorite: green grass!)
2. If needed: put a pillow under your head.
3. Place one hand on your upper chest and the second on the belly. Usually the best spot is just under the rib cage, but you can experiment here.
4. Inhale slowly through the nose and focus on letting the air deeply towards the belly.
5. While breathing in, the hand on the chest remains still (or almost still) while the one on your abdomen should rise.
6. Once you feel “full of air”, stop for a moment.
7. Exhale while gently tightening abdominal muscles through pursed lips.
8. The hand on your belly should move down to the original position.

The more you practice, the more natural this kind of breathing will become to you. And it offers a lot of benefits! You will have an easier time relaxing, meditating, letting go of emotions.

You will also increase your lung capacity, which is great for all physical activities.

Common Challenges with Meditation Breathing Exercises

Wandering Mind

If you are a beginner, it’s absolutely normal that your mind wanders. Don’t stress about it too much. If you notice that you are not focused—just bring your attention back to breathing.

I used to get distracted a lot. And sometimes I still do, especially when I’m trying new techniques. And that is completely OKAY!

Over-control

On the opposite side to distraction lies over-control. Remember: meditation breathing exercises are not about perfectly controlling every inhale and exhalation. It’s about relaxing and letting go of emotions and feelings that are needless at a time.

If you feel like you are forcing yourself to breathe—just stop. Relax, let go off tensions. If the problem persists, use other breath-work technique.

Drowsiness

That part of breath-work exercises one has both advantages and disadvantages. The pros are that it helps to fall asleep or take a nap. If you use breath-work as a tool for a goodnight sleep, then it’s great.

However, it might be problematic when using it during work, conference, workout etc.

If you do, then try sitting in an upright position. Also, you can try keeping your eyes slightly open. If none of that helps: go with shorter, but more frequent sessions. Splitting one practice into two might work wonders!

Physical Discomfort

Tensions or tightened muscles are often not the results of breath-work. It’s rather noticing that you were tense and didn’t even realize that. If that’s the case: then congratulations on recognizing that! Now you can work on relaxing your body.

Sometimes, however, you can feel discomfort during mindfulness breathing. When that happens, change your position. If needed: stretch. Then adjust breathing once again. If that didn’t help, just stop entirely.

Next time, find a position you really feel comfortable with and try shorter practice. After a few sessions you will feel more natural and thus: more relaxed.

Impatience

That one is my personal “favorite.” For a beginner, it’s easy to get bored, or even frustrated, during meditation breathing exercises. So what can you do about it?

Focus on the process, rather than outcome. Divide longer techniques into short breath-work exercises. Thank yourself after each time. And in the end: note down every benefit you feel after meditation.

Gradually increase the length of your sessions. Soon you will find out that your exercises are longer and more effective!

Breathing Deeper: How to Advance with Breath-Work?

You start with 3-3-3, then prolong it to 5 seconds. After one month, you feel confident enough to go with meditation breathing exercises for at least 10 minutes. And 4-2-6 technique hides no secrets after another month.

What then?

Try mindful breathing as a standalone practice! Do not think about it as an exercise, but rather as a full-time meditation. After 1 month (or longer, depends on you) of breath-work, it will work great for you. But at the same time: challenging a bit.

Also: incorporate breathing exercises into everyday life. Practice not only when you are stressed or anxious. Do it regularly, as a part of the morning and evening routine.

Last, but not least – once you feel comfortable: experiment with your own breath-work exercises. After all, they exist to help you!

How to Reduce Stress with Breathing – Summary

As with many meditation or meditation-like techniques, breath-work exists to reduce stress, calm fears or anxieties and help you relax. If you are not a fan of meditation, those exercises are a great replacement. They can also serve as an introduction to more advanced mindfulness practices.

Personally, I encourage you to start slowly with literally just a few cycles. Make your practice 5 minutes or even shorter. Prolong it once you feel comfortable and remember: breath-work is here for you, not you for breath-work.

Want to try something more advanced? HERE you can read about 7 meditation techniques for beginners.