How To Reduce Stress and Restore Balance Through Conscious Breathing

Wendy Lee is a Holistic Healer and Trauma-Informed Coach from Hong Kong, now based in Italy. She is the founder of KusalaFlow® and specializes in nervous system regulation, energy medicine, and emotional healing through Spinal Flow® Technique, breathwork, and Compassionate Inquiry.

Have you ever noticed how your breathing changes when life piles on the pressure? You wake up late after a restless night. Your phone’s already buzzing with unread messages. The kids can’t find their school bags. Breakfast gets burned while you're trying to answer emails. You finally get out the door, only to be stuck in traffic behind someone scrolling their phone at a green light.

By the time you get to work, you’ve spilled coffee on your shirt, missed a call from your boss, and realized you forgot your wallet at home.

Your shoulders tighten. Your heart rate picks up. And without even realizing it, your breathing becomes shallow, quick, maybe even stuck.

For thousands of years, cultures across the world have understood a truth science is only now catching up to: your breath is your gateway to balance.

In Qigong and Tai Chi, slow and intentional movement is guided by long, deep breathing to circulate Chi, your life force energy. In Pranayama, the ancient yogis mapped breath like sacred mathematics, discovering how breath patterns could shift the nervous system, awaken insight, or calm the storms of the mind. In Sufi and Shamanic traditions, breath becomes prayer, trance, or a bridge to healing.

These practices weren’t just spiritual. They were surviving. Tools for navigating grief, fatigue, fear, and overwhelm, much like the ones you face today.

As a Spinal Flow Practitioner and Breathwork Instructor, I see it all the time. Clients arrive with pain physical, emotional, or chemical. We begin to release the stored tension from their spine. After each session, I teach conscious breathing practices to help clients maintain that calm state between visits. At first, they struggle. “It feels unnatural,” they say. But I remind them this is not new. This is how we were born to breathe. We’re not learning something new. We’re just remembering.

So let’s begin by remembering.

Not just how to breathe but how to live in alignment with the calm, centered intelligence that’s always been within you.

What is stress?

In the 1930s, stress researcher Hans Selye defined stress as “everything that forces an organism to adapt to new situations.”

Stress isn’t always bad. In small doses, it’s a catalyst for growth, helping us adapt, learn new skills, and rise to challenges. It’s the reason humans have thrived in every environment on Earth, from Arctic ice to desert heat to high mountain villages.

The trouble comes when stress is intense or unrelenting. Over time, it drains our physical and emotional resources, weakens our immune system, and leaves us more vulnerable to illness. Stress can be physical (injury, illness), emotional (grief, conflict), mental (overwhelm, constant thinking), or even chemical (pollution, poor diet). Often, it’s a mix of all four.

How stress hijacks your breath?

When we’re under pressure, the sympathetic nervous system, the body’s “gas pedal,” kicks in. Heart rate rises. Muscles tense. Blood shifts away from digestion toward the arms and legs. Breathing becomes shallow and rapid.

This is the ancient fight-or-flight response, designed to help us survive threats like predators. But in modern life, “danger” often comes in the form of deadlines, traffic jams, and difficult conversations. Because there’s no physical release, this stress response can linger in the body long after the triggering event has passed.

How is the nervous system’s balancing act?

Your autonomic nervous system has two branches:

• Sympathetic (“gas pedal”): Prepares the body for action

• Parasympathetic (“brake”): Calms the body, supports digestion, and restores energy

In a healthy rhythm, these systems alternate throughout the day. Chronic stress disrupts this balance, keeping the gas pedal pressed down too long.

Here’s the good news: conscious breathing is one of the fastest ways to activate the brake, lowering your heart rate, relaxing your muscles, and shifting you back toward balance.

2 simple conscious breathing to reset your nervous system

Think of your natural, balanced state as your baseline. Stress pulls you away from it, sometimes into full emergency mode. The longer you stay there, the more “normal” it feels and the harder it becomes to relax.

Conscious breathing is the quickest way to return to baseline, whether after a stressful moment or as part of a daily routine.

Three prolonged exhalations

When you feel tension building:

1. Sit or stand comfortably.

2. Inhale gently through your nose into your abdomen.

3. Exhale slowly through your nose, making the exhale longer than the inhale.

4. Repeat at least three times.

This longer exhale signals your body to activate the parasympathetic “brake,” bringing you back toward calm.

Nasal breathing: Nature’s balancer

We naturally alternate breathing between nostrils in cycles lasting 30 minutes to 2.5 hours. This nasal cycle balances activity between the left and right sides of the brain.

Breathing through the nose, especially with structured practices, filters and warms the air, increases nitric oxide (which dilates blood vessels and airways), and supports the body’s natural balancing rhythms.

Nadi cleansing

A classical yoga technique to purify the nadis (energy channels), balance the nervous system, and neutralize stress.

1. Posture: Sit in Easy Pose or Lotus Pose with a straight spine. Practice on an empty stomach or at least 2 hours after eating.

2. Eye Position: Keep eyelids 1/10th open, roll eyes gently upward toward the Brow Point, and relax the lids.

3. Mudra: With your right hand, block the right nostril with your thumb tip and the left nostril with your index finger, forming a “U” shape (“U-Breathing”).

4. Breath Ratio: Inhale (1) = 4 counts : Hold (4)= 16 counts: Exhale (2)= 8 counts

5. Inhale through the left nostril (1)

6. Hold the breath in (4)

7. Exhale through the right nostril (2)

8. Inhale through the right nostril (1)

9. Hold the breath in (4)

10. Exhale through the left nostril (2)

11. Time: Continue for 15–62 minutes.

To End: Sit in deep meditation for a few minutes, allowing your breath to return to a natural rhythm.

Why does this work?

Conscious breathing doesn’t just move air in and out of the lungs, it shifts the entire state of your nervous system, influences hormonal balance, and regulates energy flow.

Beneath the skin, we’re not just flesh and bone; we are fields of living energy. Every breath, thought, and feeling shapes that flow. When we breathe slowly, deeply, and rhythmically, we send the body a clear message: The danger is over. You can rest now.

Stress may be unavoidable, but staying trapped in it is not. Through daily breathwork from simple prolonged exhales to advanced practices like Nadi Cleansing, you can retrain your body to return to balance more quickly.

Lee Suet Fong Wendy, Holistic Healer and Trauma-Informed Coach

Wendy Lee is a Holistic Healer, Trauma-Informed Coach, and the founder of KusalaFlow®, a healing studio based in Italy devoted to energy medicine, nervous system regulation, and trauma-informed care. Born in Hong Kong, Wendy draws from an integrative healing toolkit that includes Spinal Flow® Technique, breathwork, sound healing, Compassionate Inquiry, and Star Magic remote healing. She helps clients release emotional, physical, and energetic pain, supporting them to reconnect with their true selves and awaken the innate intelligence within.