Guided breathing exercises

Five free guided breathing exercises you can do online, with no sign-up: coherent breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, box breathing, a breathing exercise for sleep, and the cyclic sigh to calm down. Each page has an animated guide that keeps the pace for you, written step-by-step instructions, what the studies really show, and the safety tips worth knowing.

Coherent breathingIn for 5, out for 5, 6 breaths a minute for 5 minutes. Also known as resonance breathing.
4-7-8 breathingIn for 4, hold for 7, out for 8, four rounds: Andrew Weil’s technique.
Box breathingFour equal counts of 4 seconds, with a dot that traces the square.
Breathing for sleepIn for 4, out for 6: a longer exhale for bedtime.
Calm down fastThe cyclic sigh and 5-4-3-2-1 grounding, for a wave of stress.

Which breathing exercise should you choose?

All of these techniques have one thing in common: they slow your breathing down. They differ in pace, in whether they include a breath hold, and in when they come in handy.

The five exercises at a glance (pattern in seconds: in, hold, out)
Exercise	Pattern	Session	When
Coherent breathing	5 – 5	5 min, up to 3 times a day	A regular break
4-7-8	4 – 7 – 8	4 rounds, 1 min 16 s	Settling down somewhere quiet
Box	4 – 4 – 4 – 4	1 to 5 min	Regrouping before something demanding
For sleep	4 – 6	5 to 10 min	Bedtime, waking up at night
Cyclic sigh	3 + 1 – 6	1 to 5 min	A wave of stress

If you’re new to this, start with coherent breathing: it’s the most studied, it has no breath hold, and its steady rhythm is easy to learn in one session.

What the research says, in short

Slow breathing affects the heart. A meta-analysis of 223 studies (Laborde and colleagues, 2022) shows that voluntary slow breathing increases the heart rate variability measures linked to the vagus nerve, especially while you practice. Most of the included studies, however, had a high risk of bias.
A modest effect on stress. A meta-analysis of 12 randomized trials with 785 adults (Fincham and colleagues, 2023) found that breathwork was linked to lower perceived stress than in comparison groups, with a small-to-medium effect.
Not all techniques do the same things. In a study of 84 college students (Marchant and colleagues, 2025), breathing at 6 breaths a minute raised heart rate variability more than box or 4-7-8 breathing, and none of them changed mood after one session. At Stanford (Balban and colleagues, 2023), 5 minutes a day of cyclic sighing for a month improved mood more than meditation.

These exercises are tools for taking a break. They don’t replace medical advice or mental health care.

Getting started

Start short: one to three minutes is enough to learn a rhythm.
Don’t force it: full but easy breaths. Lightheadedness or tingling means you’re breathing too hard.
Never force a breath hold, and never practice breath holds in water.
If an exercise makes you anxious, stop: it happens to some people, and there are other ways to settle down.

Try the animated guide

Here’s the coherent breathing guide for a first try. Pick a length, then press Start. A light grows as you breathe in, stays still while you hold, and shrinks as you breathe out. The instruction appears in large type with a seconds count, and a bar shows how much time has passed. The guide never starts on its own, works without sound, and respects your device’s reduce motion setting: the light then only changes in brightness. On each exercise page, the written steps stay right below the guide.

Quick try · coherent breathing

In for 5 s · out for 5 s

StartStopClose Restart

Length: 1 minLength: 3 minLength: 5 min

Breathe with the Selfia app

Selfia is a free app for Android. Its animated meditation offers gentle yoga and breathing sessions guided on screen, with no voice: the instructions appear and a silhouette follows your breath, while you keep your own music or the silence. The app also has rituals for the morning, calm, focus and sleep. See everything Selfia can do.

After a session, a few words can help the calm last: our affirmations for anxiety, our affirmations for sleep and our words for getting through a panic attack.

Selfia is not a medical device. If you’re struggling or thinking about suicide, help is available: in the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, call Samaritans on 116 123; anywhere else, find a local line at findahelpline.com.