What it is: Intentional breathing to sync your breath and heart rhythms — like a manual override for your nervous system.
Why it helps:
This technique balances your autonomic nervous system, lowers cortisol, boosts emotional regulation, and brings your ADHD brain back from panic or reactivity to clarity and calm. It engages the vagus nerve and helps bring the prefrontal cortex (your “wise brain”) back online.
Try: Inhale 4 seconds / Exhale 6 seconds
That longer exhale helps your body shift from fight-or-flight to rest-and-regulate mode. Great when you’re anxious, overwhelmed, or can’t focus.
Try: Inhale 5 seconds / Exhale 5 seconds
This balanced rhythm brings steady calm without making you feel shut down. It helps cool the emotional heat without suppressing it.
Try it for 2–3 minutes — or less if that feels better. Stop anytime if you feel discomfort or pain.
Need a visual guide? Try apps like Respirelax+ or iBreath
Melanie Sirois
My experience and interests give me a unique understanding of:
- How to navigate and develop mastery in the face of huge emotions, triggers, emptiness, and relational fears
- Learn to fill yourself up and develop the peace of sustainable unconditional self-love, self-trust, and self-worth
- Go from a scarcity mindset aimed at trying to get needs met to an abundance mindset that feels the fulfilment of sharing with and elevating others
- Develop sustainable confidence and trust that isn't conditional on outside circumstances