Latest news with #RanganChatterjee
Time of India
5 days ago
- General
- Time of India
3-4-5 Breathing Exercise: 3-4-5 easy-to-do breathing exercise to reduce stress and anxiety within seconds, as per a British doctor
Stress rarely announces its arrival. It builds, slowly, silently, until shoulders feel tight, thoughts scatter like dry leaves, and the heart begins to race. At such moments, the natural response is to push through, but sometimes, the answer lies in something far simpler: the breath. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now British physician Dr Rangan Chatterjee has spoken about a breathing technique so subtle and so effective that it can help calm the nervous system within seconds. It's called the 3-4-5 breathing method. No apps. No gadgets. Just a quiet moment with the lungs—and perhaps a deeper connection to the present. What exactly is 3-4-5 breathing? The method follows this simple rhythm: Breathe in for 3 seconds Hold that breath for 4 seconds Breathe out slowly for 5 seconds The numbers are more than just a pattern. According to Dr Chatterjee, the magic lies in the longer out-breath. When the exhale is longer than the inhale, it sends a signal to the body that the 'threat' has passed. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, commonly known as the 'rest and digest' system. Pranayama, or controlled breathing exercises, are fundamental in yoga for promoting overall health, reducing stress, and improving circulation. What does that mean in real life? A sense of groundedness. A feeling that the storm has quieted, even if just a little. Why it works It's not just a 'feel-good' trick. There's truth in this technique. The human body runs on two nervous system modes: Sympathetic: the fight-or-flight state Parasympathetic: the thrive-and-heal state When under stress, the sympathetic system kicks in. Heartbeat quickens. Muscles tense. Breathing becomes shallow. But by lengthening the exhale, the brain gets the message: 'All is safe.' Studies in neurobiology back this up, longer out-breaths help lower cortisol, the body's stress hormone, and can reduce heart rate too. It's a natural reset switch. One that requires no cost, just quiet focus. Importance of Breathing Exercises How to practice it The beauty of 3-4-5 breathing is its simplicity. It doesn't ask for silence or solitude. It doesn't require perfect posture. It can be done: Sitting in a car during traffic Standing in the kitchen between tasks Lying in bed before sleep Even walking, with conscious breathwork A few rounds, even 3 to 4 cycles, can create a noticeable shift. If time allows, extend it to five minutes. But there's no pressure. The breath knows what to do. The trick is just to begin. What this breathing technique brings Yes, it reduces stress. But the ripple effects of calm breathing reach further: Better focus during the day Deeper sleep at night Improved digestion due to lowered cortisol Reduced anxiety spikes over time And for some, even a gentle rise in self-awareness It's not a miracle cure—but it's an honest tool. A trusted pause in a world that rarely stops.
Elle
27-05-2025
- Health
- Elle
You Know The Gut Feeling You Have When Things Go Wrong? It Has A Name: Interoception
Imagine a world in which our bodies had their own built-in health and wellness data tracker, which kept tabs on our rest, heart rate, and breathing, the way an Apple Watch would. No longer would we have to defer to our pieces of wearable tech to check spikes in our heart rates or note our sleep deficits the morning after a disturbed night of rest. Instead, our bodies would keep a score, that we could read ourselves, from our very own data store. This isn't some Black Mirror futuristic vision, but rather the reality of a new frontier within mindfulness called interoception. You might not have heard of the term yet, but some of the wellness world's most prominent voices are extolling the virtues of this 'basic power of detection that we're born with,' including Dr Rangan Chatterjee who makes the case in his latest book, Make Change That Lasts, that interoception is one of science's most exciting new fields of research. 'Interoception is a sixth sense we are born with. It's not about us interpreting signals from the outside world but about the signals transmitted from our internal organs to our brains.' And it can help us carve out time to improve both physical and mental health in a world where external stimuli are often in overdrive. FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE Interoception is a way for us to 'train the mind and body to work better together, so we can almost hack the nervous system to induce calmness,' says science journalist Caroline Williams, the author of new book Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Transform Your Health, who advises working on 'making friends with your body' through breath-focused meditation and mindful movement like Pilates, yoga and Tai Chi. In talking to experts for this piece I realised I had also practiced interoception without knowing. In a recent session, my therapist was encouraging me to ground myself when I sense that my inner child feels fearful. She advised me to close my eyes, focus on my breath, and to place my dominant hand on my chest, my heartbeat pitter pattering beneath my skin. 'In through the nose,' she said softly, her voice barely audible. 'And out through the mouth.' The exercise, I'd later learn, was a way of developing my own interoceptive awareness. There are three main types of interoceptive signals: unconscious — heartbeat and breathing, for example, which happen most of the time without much awareness; conscious — which you can teach yourself to tap into, such as thirst, hunger or anxiety — and gut feelings, which are tricky to pinpoint to one particular area of the body but affect you anyway. 'These are things like how much energy you've got, and whether you feel like you've got enough energy to do what you need to do, whether you feel capable today and confident, whether you feel a little bit on edge, and you're not quite sure why,' Williams notes, adding that interoceptive signals are important because they affect how you feel, what you're motivated to do, the way you think and the decisions you make, but they're not easily quantifiable. And while we may have talked about 'gut feelings' for years to describe a sense of intuition, many people don't realise that they're grounded in science, which is where interoception comes in. Breathwork exercises are a key part of building interoceptive awareness, although the critical difference between wellness-focused mindfulness breath work and interoceptive breath work is the latter asks that you apply your bodily signals critically to the knowledge you have of what's happening around you. Rob Rea, a breathwork specialist has seen a marked increase in clients coming to him for help with problems he has treated by helping them to become more interoceptively tuned in. He tells me about a client who's a principal ballerina at the Royal Opera House. 'Before she performs sometimes, we'll Zoom and she'll often tell me that she's in stress mode,' Rea explains. 'My job is then to regulate her nervous system. I'll ask her to look around the room and to tell me what she sees, what she's wearing, which colours she can see in the room. This is called somatic experiencing, which utilises interoception to gain awareness and insight of what's really happening in the body.' Rea then asks his client to tell him what she can hear and feel, and where the feelings are manifesting in the body. 'It can feel a little bit like a waste of time for people whenever they close their eyes,' Rea says. 'But it's only in getting in touch with what your body's telling you that you can really hear it properly.' I recently shared a traumatic experience from my childhood with my therapist; her response, like Rea's, was to ask me how I felt, and where in the body the feeling manifested. In locating the feeling — which we uncovered as fear and shame — I was able to process it better, without becoming triggered by it. The exercise was a way of enhancing my interoceptive ability. When I thought about what I experienced as a child later that day and my heart started racing and my stomach sunk, I sat down, closed my eyes and allowed my body to metabolise the feelings that were manifesting in my solar plexus. It made me feel more in control during a moment that otherwise felt overwhelming. An improved sense of interoception can have a transformative impact on a person's wellbeing. Research from 2013 found that good interoceptive awareness was what allowed 'intuitive' eaters – those who eat in response to physical rather than emotional cues and as a result eat only when hungry – to keep their weight down. 'That's something that's really important these days, because we live in the era of gym selfies, and young people are trying to live up to these unrealistic body images from the outside,' Williams says. 'And actually, if you feel your body more from the inside, then you like yourself more. You have less body image issues.' Another study from 2021 found that by training autistic individuals to be more aware of their heartbeat, stress levels could be dramatically reduced. After six sessions, 31% of them recovered completely from their anxiety, compared to just 16% of the control group. Interoception has also helped experts to understand why physical exercise can help relieve symptoms of depression. The fitter you are, the more active your heart is, and the more attuned you're likely to be with the body's muscles and organs. 'People who are very sedentary may have problems tuning into their interoceptive senses because they haven't experienced their heart rate rising and their breathing rate rising — they may not understand that that's completely fine and healthy,' Williams adds. Being interoceptively aware is harder than it sounds though. Our increased reliance on digital devices has also impacted our interoceptive awareness. 'The digital ecosystem is set up to keep us online and to give us instant dopamine hits,' Rea warns. 'We're up against a very powerful beast that is training our brains to switch from one thing to another every 8 or 9 seconds. That's a huge change in how our attentions have shifted, so a large part of interoception is actually training yourself to focus and pay attention to what's happening in your body.' It's something I remember the next time I reach for my phone and start doomscrolling. As my screen flashes through dancing, cooking and hair washing videos, I take a minute to stop and detect what the nebulous feeling of sadness is inside of me, and whereabouts in my body it's located. I sit in the sadness and do some deep breathing just like my therapist advised and I physically feel something shift. The more I do this, the more I feel in tune with, and ultimately in control of, my own body. While the instruction to 'listen to your body' might have been bandied around in the age of wellness, it holds more weight, and scientific backing, than previously thought. Interoception is the sixth sense we could all tap into more. After all, everyone's body has something to say, it's just a case of tuning in more intentionally so that we can hear and understand it more clearly. ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE. Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
The Independent
26-02-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Independent
Dr Rangan Chatterjee reveals eight secrets to achieving happiness
A doctor has revealed his top eight tips to feeling happier - and says it isn't as complicated as we might think. Author Dr Rangan Chatterjee says happiness is a skill 'we can all get better at if we know what to work on'. 'I think the biggest mistake people make about happiness is they think that someday they're just going to stumble across it,' says the resident doctor on BBC Breakfast. 'I think it's an unhelpful way to think about happiness.' The 47-year-old, whose new book Make Change That Lasts has shot to the top of the bestsellers list, is due to start his first UK-wide tour in March, The Thrive Tour – which he describes as a 'fun, transformative and immersive evening' aiming to 'help people understand what it truly means to thrive'. Here's his advice... 1.'Work' on your happiness The three ingredients for happiness are alignment, contentment and control, Chatterjee says. 'Alignment is basically when your inner values and your external actions start to line up more. Contentment is about regularly doing things that give you that sense of contentment and calm and peace. And control is not about controlling things, it's about doing things regularly that give you a sense of control over your life.' For example, five minutes of journaling each day, or 10 minutes of yoga. 'Things that give you a sense of control in a world that's fundamentally uncontrollable.' 2. Include more joy We often don't think about joy and passion as part of health, says Chatterjee, but we must. 'We think about health as being something that has to be quite hard, and about deprivation and restriction. But there's really good evidence on passion and joy. We know that people who regularly do things that they love are more resilient to stress, it's very good for your health.' It could simply be dancing in your kitchen, getting into a hobby or putting on your favourite comedian for 10 minutes. 'These are things that we often don't think about through the lens of health and happiness.' 3. Dare to be disliked The fear of being disliked and therefore moulding yourself to be who you think others want you to be, could really be impacting health. 'It was something that's affected me negatively for much of my life, until recently, I would change who I was in order to be liked by people,' admits Chatterjee. 'We shouldn't feel bad that we do this or have these tendencies. 'For many of us, though, we had to work to receive love as children – I know that was the case for me, and I'm not blaming my parents. I thought I was only loved when I got top marks of school, and so that drives you to be a certain way. It works with the child. It just doesn't serve you as an adult. Now I find it quite easy now to go, if that person doesn't agree with what I decided to do or not do, that's OK. They're entitled to not agree but I don't need to change who I am in order to get their love and acceptance.' Plus, 'If you can just get better at saying no, you will automatically have more time for the things that nourish you.' 4. Breathe through stress 'A breathing practice that works for you is one of the best things you can do because it's free, and nothing changes your state quicker than breathing,' he says. 'My favourite one that I've been teaching to patients for over a decade now is called the 3-4-5 breath. 'You breathe in for three, you hold for four and you breathe out five. Anytime your out breath is longer than your in breath, you literally switch off the stress half of your nervous system, and you activate the relaxation part of your nervous system. And so you can lower anxiety, lower stress, improve your digestion, improve your focus. I teach that to loads of business leaders and lots of school teachers for example. It's so damn effective.' 5. Carve out alone time 'I think that one of the most important practices for any one of us in 2025 – whether you're talking about health, happiness or relationships – is a daily practice of solitude. You have to have time with yourself each day.' He adds: 'I think phones, for all their benefits, [mean] we're no longer having to spend any time with our own thoughts, because we can just distract with emails, news, Instagram… and you'll never get to know yourself, and you'll never know if you have a reliance on being liked unless you're spending a bit of time with yourself each day.' 6. Ask yourself two questions every night 'I would think having some self awareness is 90 per cent of the game,' Chatterjee says. Therapy isn't accessible and affordable for everyone, so he says asking yourself two simple questions every evening will help you get to know yourself and your patterns. 'They are: what went well today? And what can I do differently tomorrow? 'This sounds so simple but I challenge anyone if they do that for seven days in a row, and it will take them minutes each night to do it, they will start to change their relationship with life' says Chatterjee. For example, 'I was knackered when I got home from work. I was really tired, but I didn't order [takeaway]. I still got some things out of the fridge and made a home-cooked meal, even though I was tempted. OK great, that went well. 'What can I do differently tomorrow? I was really tired today, [had] loads of sugar and caffeine, and I think the reason is I stayed up until midnight watching Netflix last night.' 7. Look into the root of your habits Chatterjee doesn't need to tell us all about the negatives of sugar, 'You already know that,' he says, 'What you need is an understanding of why you keep going to sugar, [asking] when I'm stressed? When I've had a row with my partner? When I've been on Zoom calls all day? 'Now we know the role sugar plays, we can start to explore what else we can use instead of sugar to play that role. 'When we're too focused on the behaviour and not the energy behind the behaviour, we don't think about the role that behaviour plays in our life.' 8. Get uncomfortable Modern life has become very comfortable. We can roll out of bed, open a laptop and work in our pyjamas, and we can order cooked food straight to our door. 'You literally don't have to do anything physical anymore in order to live – or many of us don't – and it comes at real cost. Because we're never regularly doing things that challenge us or we find physically tricky, we start to lose trust in ourselves,' he says. By including 'micro doses' of discomfort into your day – which could just be turning the shower cold for 10 seconds at the end or vowing to always take the stairs – 'You remind yourself that you're a capable human who can do difficult things.'
