Take a Breath!

Deep breathing as a means to cope with stress

When you own your breath, no one can steal your peace.

Unknown

⏱ Reading time: 3 minutes

What does breathing have to do with language learning? We’re glad you asked.

As mentioned in our article on recognizing stress, one way stress can manifest in our bodies is in our breathing. When our body is stressed, our breathing becomes shallower and quicker.

Watch this short clip of Dr. Patrick Steffen, an expert on stress management, on how practicing slower breaths can benefit you.

 

As Dr. Steffen said, besides helping your body deal with stress, engaging in breathing exercises, like the 6 breath per minute breathing mentioned, will also help your mind to be more focused and engaged with the task at hand. To achieve a breathing rate of 6 breaths per minute, try breathing in for 4 seconds, then out for 6. The free apps suggested at this link can guide you through it so that you can focus on your breath rather than worrying about counting.

Hopefully you’re starting to see how this could be helpful in your language study, but you don’t need to just take our word for it. Sam, a student studying Arabic, received training on breathing exercises. His experience demonstrates how it helps one manage stress.

Leading up to his study abroad, Sam used an app to practice deep breathing. He did this on his own a couple of times a week, and it eventually became second nature. By the time he began his study abroad, he knew the exercise well enough to do it without the app. This skill came in handy in moments of increased stress and anxiety. Even in his Arabic classes, on days when he found himself feeling especially nervous about speaking up, he was able to stop and breathe, right there in class. After taking a minute to do so, he felt calmer and ready to participate. He said this about the role deep breathing played for him: “It just helped me to stop and analyze, ‘okay, what am I doing,’ focus, and just kind of relax and let things go.” Near the end, he began to worry about his future as well as the end of the program and wrote:

This week was the hardest week in the program for me…. The stress and anxiety made me sick and difficult to go to class or do much at all. Frankly I was quite crippled by it. What helped was the paced breathing and just getting back to work. The breathing helps to control my stress and anxiety at least for a small amount of time and then getting back to the grind is what helped me this week…. I am excited to feel that I have control over the end of this program and I just need to remain c[al]m and keep working.

This is likely one of the reasons he performed particularly well in his oral proficiency interview shortly thereafter.

Taking the time to check in with your body and slow things down through deep breathing can be key to helping you “mind your head,” mitigating the stress of the challenges you face as you work toward your language learning goals. Practicing deep breathing can also improve your heart rate variability (HRV), helping your body to become more resilient to stress in general. Read more about HRV here.