How to Breathe Away Anxiety

Sarah Gerhardt (0:05)

I started out growing up on the beaches in part in Hawaii and being left to myself to figure out how to get out of the water, and I survived, so that's good.

When I wanted to start surfing bigger waves, I did encounter the problem of not being able to hold my breath and of getting almost to that panic state. So, it was really important to do breath hold training. So, I needed to train my body to not freak out, to not go into that, like if you hold your breath for a long time, your hands can start to tingle, your vision starts to get black from the outside. There can be a lot of anxiety. We have a natural response to breathe when our CO2 levels get high, but that's trainable. So I can train myself to be comfortable in the chaos and the discomfort.

But I realized that I have a lot of breathing practices for movement. So I have breathing practices when I swim, I have breathing practices before I go surf big waves. I just didn't have a practice for late for an appointment. I'm in my car in the traffic. Or I didn't have a practice for like when I'm sitting here and I'm nervous talking to you. So I have all these amazing breath work practices that are really important for the things that I like to do physically. But I'd like to incorporate practices for just sitting here.

Dacher Keltner (1:42)

Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner.

This week is our first episode in a series on science-backed ways to breathe away anxiety. We're starting with a controlled breathing technique called cyclic sighing. It's a simple and powerful way to reduce anxiety and promote relaxation. It's quite different from the type of breathing our guest today, professional surfer Sarah Gerhardt, is accustomed to.

Sarah is the first woman to surf the mavericks waves in Northern California where swells reach up to 60 feet. When she's not navigating the waves, she's a chemistry professor in Santa Cruz. While Sarah finds calm in the ocean, life on land can stress her out. So for our show, Sarah tried out tricyclic sighing for a few weeks to help her relax. We hear from Sarah and also from David Spiegel, the Stanford scientist who helped discover the benefits of doing this practice for five minutes a day.

David Spiegel (2:37)

We were trying to see whether people, by just practicing a brief daily breathwork exercise, could demonstrate some significant improvement in mood and physical arousal and tension.

Dacher Keltner (2:52)

How and why to try cyclic sighing after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. This week is all about the science behind a controlled breathing technique called cyclic sighing. With me now is professional surfer Sarah Gerhardt to talk about her experience with cyclic sighing.

Sarah, thanks for being on the show.

Sarah Gerhardt (5:02)

It's truly a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Dacher Keltner (5:04)

I want to ask you about your surfing life. You've been surfing since you were 13 and made a professional career out of surfing large waves.