The 4-7-8 Breathwork Trifecta – Powerful Secrets for Meals, Stress, and Sleep

In this immersive solo episode, I’m thrilled to explore the transformative potential of breathwork for performance, mental clarity, and a more fulfilling life. Drawing on my background as a physiologist and neuroscientist, I reveal why simple changes in your breathing can shift the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity—ultimately refining your body’s response to stress, digestion, and sleep. By honing these natural rhythms, we can create lasting benefits with minimal effort.

Throughout our journey, you’ll discover the 44-Second Breathwork Trifecta—my go-to toolkit for upgrading your mealtime mindfulness, conquering stressful moments, and preparing your mind and body for deep, restorative rest. We delve into the surprising science behind heart rate variability, the powerful 4-7-8 breathing method, and practical tips for ensuring that every breath truly counts. Whether you’re at the dinner table, in a high-stakes meeting, or winding down at night, these techniques offer an instant reset for your nervous system.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking a quick and effective way to optimize daily life through mindful breathing. From enhancing digestion and curbing emotional cravings to boosting focus and reclaiming peaceful sleep, you’ll learn how to leverage these easy, evidence-based strategies any time you need them most. Tune in to experience a new level of vitality—one breath at a time.

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Importance of applied breathwork 00:00:10

Mindful eating and breathwork 00:06:32

Applied breathwork for better sleep 00:10:09

Breathing techniques for relaxation 00:14:31

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Important Links:

Dr. Andrew Weil’s 4-7-8 Tutorial
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
PubMed Article on Heart Rate Variability
Validation Study of a Commercial Wearable Device to Automatically Detect and Estimate Sleep

Chapters

• 0:00 Importance of applied breathwork
• 6:32 Mindful eating and breathwork
• 10:09 Applied breathwork for better sleep
• 14:31 Breathing techniques for relaxation

Transcript

Andrés Preschel:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Know Your Physio podcast. I'm your host and personal physiologist and neuroscientist Andres Prischel. And today we're going to have a little chat about the three most important times to incorporate applied breathwork for performance, mental clarity, longevity, and simply a better quality of life. So I want to preface this by saying that breathwork is plain and simply the simplest, easiest, most accessible, and in many cases, the most effective way to regulate the state of our nervous system. That constant tug of war between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity. So if you look at the nervous system, we have what's called the autonomic nervous system, which breaks into two branches, sympathetic and parasympathetic. So those are often referred to as the fight or flight state. as it pertains to the sympathetic and rest, digest, and heal states, parasympathetic branches of the nervous system. If you look at something like heart rate variability, for example, a metric that many of today's wearable devices capture, a very hot metric in the realms of health optimization, peak performance, et cetera, that small degree of variability in our heartbeats actually reflects that never ending activity and tug of war between these two systems. So for example, if you look at an average resting heart rate, so 60 beats per minute, that assumes about a beat per second, but that's an average. Realistically, it's more like a heart rate interval of 1.1 seconds. And then the next heart rate interval is 1.05 and then maybe 0.9 and 0.95 and 1.01, 0.98, et cetera. So the average might be 60 beats per minute, but there's a certain degree of variability between those intervals. And that actually reflects that constant tug of war between sympathetic and parasympathetic because with every exhale that we take, we have more parasympathetic activity. Heart rate variability goes up. Heart rate goes down. Every inhale, we have more sympathetic activity. Heart rate variability drops and heart rate goes up. Sure, it all averages out, but it's important to consider that we can elicit a small degree of change by noticing and modifying our breath and how this compounds over time because we breathe thousands upon thousands upon thousands of times a day, millions of times throughout the year. And with a little bit of awareness, we can change the trajectory for health, wellbeing, presence, can change the quality of our lives. So how do we apply this practically in our day to day? What are the three most important times of the day where we can bring awareness to our breath? And by bringing awareness to our breath, we have the highest ROI to improve quality of life. Because let's face it, I mean, it does take some time to do this breathing, but it's just a few seconds that can impact hours upon hours of our days. So very simple. Here are the three times of the day. Best times to apply breathwork. They are before every one of our meals, before we eat anything. anytime we are anticipating or dealing with stress as a sort of secret weapon, and when we're in bed getting ready to sleep. What do all three of these scenarios have in common? Think about it. What all three of these scenarios have in common is that they benefit immensely your overall experience. And these scenarios will be exponentially better with more parasympathetic activity and more presence. So for example, when we're getting ready to eat by doing some applied breathwork, and I'll get into the protocol in just a second. By doing some applied breath work, we will chew more slowly and more thoroughly. This increases the surface area of the food significantly. And with more pericymbiotic activity, we have more blood flow in the digestive tract and more and better gut motility. So the movement of our gut and our bowels is much better. So what happens now when you combine these two, when you have greater surface area and more blood flow than digestive tract, it becomes way easier to digest this food and you're more mindful of how much you're eating. You can extinguish emotional cravings. and be more intentional about how much food you're putting in your body. You can get that satiety signal when it counts and you're not going to be weighed down by your food because you're going to be eating less and you're not going to have to direct all of your precious blood flow into the stomach because you didn't chew very thoroughly and now you need more energy to help break that food down. You've made it easier for your body to digest while simultaneously eating less. So instead of being weighed down by your food, you'll be powered up. Give it a try. Next one is any time that we're anticipating or dealing with stress. So You know, some of you guys tuning in, some of you gals might be peak performers and you know how to manage stress well. But either way, there are certain scenarios that are objectively stressful. So this has nothing to do with how well you tolerate them, but just acknowledging that some things are objectively stressful, like having difficult conversations. with loved ones or co-workers or even strangers online, comment section on Instagram. Maybe, you know, you're giving a presentation at work or you're going to get on a stage or you're going to compete in some sort of mental or physical event or both, right? Anytime that we're anticipating stress, we can do a little bit of breath work and help induce more heart rate variability and more presence. And now we're simply more prepared. And anytime that we're dealing with stress, we can do applied breath work and it's like a secret weapon. So imagine that you're in like a board meeting and everyone has to kind of, you know, get together and negotiate to make big decisions. And everyone's a little stressed out. Everyone's at the edge of their seats. Everybody wants to get the better end of the deal. And you do a little bit of applied breath work, you're more present, more focused, have more blood flow in the brain, higher HRV, lower heart rate, lower cortisol. And you're enabling this effect and nobody in the room knows it because this is a subtle yet effective strategy. but you are objectively more prepared than anybody else in the room to make a great decision and to show up as the highest performing version of yourself. And you can do this in any conversation. You can do this anytime that you're dealing with something difficult and nobody knows that you're doing it. In fact, if you notice, I'm being very deliberate as I share this information with you because between things that I'm saying, I'm mindful of my breath. I'm pausing, taking deep inhales and exhaling slowly using my diaphragm. Because as we speak and we mouth breathe while we speak. We enable more sympathetic activity. So it's easy for me to speak at a million miles per hour and overwhelm you with information, but I'm taking my time. So the last scenario is in bed. So I've, you know, I've, I've, I've coached hundreds upon hundreds of high performers and I have done absolutely everything that you can imagine. on myself and on my clients to improve sleep outcomes and support sleep efficiency and get deeper more restorative sleep to wake up feeling refreshed and energized for the day. And if I had to isolate the single easiest most accessible and most effective strategy to support sleep quality it is applied breathwork in bed. So honorable mentions, and this is actually, uh, thanks to some brilliant whoop studies, the wearable device company. The two things that lead to the highest sleep scores consistently are avoiding alcohol and having an earlier dinner. I think the first one is obvious, having an earlier dinner. Well, that's a conversation for another time. But what I have personally found in my population, in my sample of high performing self-aware professionals, the number one thing, in addition to these two, applied breathwork in bed. Because you immediately enable more parasympathetic activity. You're more present. You get you to take your mind off of the structure of the day or what's going to happen tomorrow. Become more aware of your thoughts. And you realize that while you might want to continue to be productive, even in bed, the essential role that sleep plays to prepare you for the next day, to help regulate your nervous system, replenish hormones and neurotransmitters, to wake up feeling refreshed. So when we recognize the critical role of recovery. and we commit to it, we become fully invested in it, we can leverage our recovery to show up as the most incredible versions of ourselves. Anyway, in bed, before you eat, and when you're anticipating or dealing with stress, here's what you need to do. It's a modified four, seven, eight breath. Four second inhale. 7 second hold, 8 second exhale. And you're going to do this through your nose. Well, the most important thing is that you inhale through the nose. You can technically exhale through your mouth if you wish. But the bare minimum, inhale through your nose. Make sure that your chest and shoulders are completely still. No rising in the chest or shoulders. Instead, completely still, and you're going to be using your diaphragm or your belly instead to breathe. So you can place your hand on your belly, feeling it expanding and contracting. And now we know that we're using the diaphragm to breathe. We're filling up the lower lung, which has a much greater surface area and more alveoli where oxygen exchange occurs. So you can take deeper breaths easily. And I want you to notice when you inhale through your nose, are you breathing up? Is that breath going up the nostrils or is it going through the nostrils to the back of your head? That's what I want. Breathing into your face. You can also try and see if you can hear and feel your breath in the back of your throat, almost like you're going to fog up a glass on a cold winter day. lion's breath, ujjayi breath. That's what I want. So inhale, hear that breath hitting the back of your throat and draw that air using your diaphragm. Four seconds in, seven second hold, eight second exhale. Why are we doing four, seven, eight? Why does that work so well? Well, number one, when we slow our breathing, we have a lower heart rate, lower cortisol, greater heart rate variability. By pausing slightly between breaths, we see a small accumulation of carbon dioxide, CO2, which leads to what's called a cardio-inhibitory effect. That also slows the heart rate. And by spending twice as long exhaling as inhaling, we have double a 2 to 1 ratio of parasympathetic to sympathetic activity. Like I said earlier, exhales equal parasympathetic. That's why snipers exhale before they take a shot. They get to calm down, relax, and be precise. You are A sniper for citizen science. We're here to be precise with our efforts to understand how they work and how they're going to help us hit the bullseye, accomplish our goals. So four seconds in, seven second hold, eight second exhale. Another really cool thing about this, and this is just, you know, more from the psychological perspective of 4-7-8, you know, as we get into doing several rounds of 4-7-8, 4-7-8, 4-7-8, Those specific numbers just help us kind of like focus on the breathwork protocol and keep our mind from drifting and thinking about something else, getting distracted and ultimately getting in the way of our efforts to induce more parasympathetic activity and relax. 478-478-478. There you go. Before you eat, anticipating or dealing with stress, and in bed. Enjoy. So that's all for today's show. Thank you so much for tuning in today. For all of the show notes, including clickable links to anything and everything that we discussed today, everything from discount codes to videos, to research articles, books, tips, tricks, techniques, and of course, to learn more about the guest on today's episode, all you have to do is head to my website, AndresPreschel.com. That's A-N-D-R-E-S-P-R-E-S-C-H-E-L.com. and go to podcasts. You can also leave your feedback, questions, and suggestions for future episodes, future guests, so on and so forth. Thanks again for tuning in and I'll see you on the next one. Have a lovely rest of your day.