06 Oct Excessive sighing: why you can’t catch your breath (and 3 strategies to fix it)
It’s 5:00 PM and you’re just coming out of another long meeting. Your chest feels tight. You take a deep breath. One of those big, reaching breaths that feels like you need to push past some invisible ceiling just to get relief.
Sound familiar?
That big, gulping breath you need is called a sigh—a breath 2-3x bigger than your normal breath size.
Now while occasional sighing is normal (your body actually does it automatically every 5 minutes to sustain lung function), when you’re doing it every few minutes… it means something’s off.
Chances are, you’ve trained your body to over-breathe.
(Well, not you exactly. The world we live in, the jobs we have, the foods we eat,…)
Here’s what’s happening:
Every time you take one of those big, relieving sighs, you dump excess carbon dioxide (CO₂) from your system. Wait! Don’t write this off as biochemistry nonsense that’s only relevant in the laboratory. This absolutely matters for your daily experience:
CO₂ isn’t just waste you exhale. It’s the key that unlocks oxygen from your red blood cells. When CO₂ drops too low, oxygen gets stuck in your bloodstream instead of reaching your brain and muscles. That’s why you feel air-hungry, foggy, and like nothing you breathe is quite enough.
The cruel irony is that the harder you try to breathe your way out of it (through deep sighs followed by hyperventilation), the worse it gets:
The more you sigh and offload CO2, the less tolerant your body gets to CO2, the more you need to sigh to offload CO2. It becomes a self-reinforcing loop.
Why everything you tried hasn’t stuck
Most stress management advice treats symptoms, not systems. Maybe you’ve been told before to “just breathe deeply” or “exercise more” or my all-time favorite: “have you tried cold plunging?”
But if your baseline breathing is dysfunctional, adding fancy techniques is like putting premium gas in a car with a broken engine.
You need to first work on your foundational breathing pattern. Make sure that’s fully functional, and then you can start layering in other tools and techniques.
So below are three strategies to start doing just that.
But first, an important distinction: Your body’s automatic sighs (the ones you don’t even notice) are healthy. Leave those alone. The strategies below are for the conscious sighs: the ones where you’re aware of needing to “catch your breath,” where you’re reaching for that big inhale just to get some relief. Those are the signals that your CO₂ tolerance needs retraining.
Strategy 1: The Micro-Reset (2 minutes, anywhere)
The next time you feel that urge to take a big, reaching breath just to relieve discomfort:
- Pause and drop your shoulders
- Exhale gently through your nose and hold for 2-3 seconds
- Take a slow, light breath in through your nose
- Repeat 2-3 times
It will feel uncomfortable in the beginning, but by doing this, you’re gently restoring the O₂ / CO₂ balance your brain needs to function optimally.
Strategy 2: Build your tolerance throughout the day
This is where the real training happens. During your normal workday—while reading emails, sitting in meetings, working at your desk—practice breathing lightly through your nose. Small, soft breaths. Gentle pause at the end of the exhale.
The goal: keep your breathing so quiet that someone sitting next to you wouldn’t hear it or see your chest moving.
When you feel that familiar air hunger creeping in, don’t immediately reach for the big sigh. Sit with the mild discomfort for 10-30 seconds while maintaining those light, nasal breaths. This is your CO₂ tolerance training. You’re teaching your body that it’s safe to have slightly higher CO₂ levels, which is exactly what you need for optimal oxygen delivery and reduced anxiety.
Strategy 3: The 5 BPM Protocol (10 minutes, high ROI)
Once daily, practice breathing at 5 breaths per minute:
- 6 seconds in through your nose
- 6 seconds out through your nose
- Focus on light, slow and gentle breaths
- 10 minutes total
Think of this like metabolic optimization. You’re training your body to be more efficient with CO₂, which means better oxygen delivery to your brain during high-pressure moments.
Slow breathing has a whole range of other benefits—from lowering sympathetic nervous system activity to activating your prefrontal cortex to improving Heart Rate Variability—so it’s truly the best breathing exercise you can do for yourself.
I typically advise to use a simple, free app like Breathe (see below) to set the durations, and go. That’s literally all you need.
What happens when you fix the foundation
Your breathing patterns were shaped by years of high-pressure decision-making, daily coffee, endless meetings, and chronic low-level stress. They’ve become as automatic as typing.
By fixing the physiological foundation first, everything else becomes easier.
- Better oxygen to your brain means clearer thinking
- Balanced CO₂ means deeper sleep
- Less air hunger means less background anxiety
In my framework of foundational breathing + nervous system regulation + embodied self-awareness, the absolute first thing we look at is breathing mechanics (how you’re breathing) and chemistry (how good your body is at tolerating CO2). And then, we practice functional, healthy breathing.
Andre, a tech startup founder with a neuroscience phD who went through my 8-week program, went from…
“I feel like with every breath, I hit some kind of wall. Nothing feels satisfying.”
to…
“For the first time in years, I can take a deep, easy breath without that tight, restricted feeling.”
This goes so much deeper than “breathing better.”
When sighing reduces and your breath becomes balanced, you get more oxygen to your brain and body. That means more energy, sharper focus, and better sleep.
Imagine what you could do with that. Not in some far-off future after you’ve overhauled your entire life… but starting in the next two weeks?
What decisions would you make differently? What conversations would you handle better? What opportunities would you finally have the clarity to pursue?
The gap between where you are now and where you want to be isn’t necessarily about working harder or wanting it more. It might be as simple as removing the physiological handbrake that’s been slowing you down for years.