Timefall · Guides

Box breathing, cyclic sighing and 4-7-8

What the research says · By Ilia Usatov · November 2026 · 5 min read

Breathing exercises promise calm in a few minutes, and there are many to choose from. One recent trial compared some of them directly. Its result: all of them helped, and one, cyclic sighing, helped most.

The techniques

• Box breathing: breathe in, hold, breathe out and hold again, each for the same count, often four seconds.
• Cyclic sighing: two inhales through the nose, the second one topping up the lungs, then a long, slow exhale through the mouth. Repeat.
• 4-7-8: breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 7, breathe out for 8. It was popularised by the physician Andrew Weil.

The Stanford trial

In 2023, Melis Yilmaz Balban and colleagues at Stanford ran a remote randomised trial. Participants practised for five minutes a day for a month, in one of four groups: cyclic sighing, box breathing, cyclic hyperventilation with breath holds, or mindfulness meditation as the comparison.

All four groups felt better: positive mood went up, and anxiety and negative mood went down. The breathing groups improved positive mood more than the meditation group. Cyclic sighing stood out: it gave the largest gain in daily positive mood, the gain grew with more days of practice, and it lowered resting breathing rate more than meditation.

What about 4-7-8?

4-7-8 wasn’t part of the Stanford trial, and we couldn’t find trials of it as strong as that one. What it shares with the others is a long, slow exhale, which is also the core of cyclic sighing. It may well help, but the evidence for it specifically is thinner.

How to try it

• Five minutes is enough. That was the whole daily dose in the trial.
• Make the exhale long. In cyclic sighing, breathe out slowly until your lungs feel empty.
• Use a timer, not a clock. Set five minutes and stop counting time. Counting breaths is enough to think about.
• Stop if you feel dizzy or light-headed, and breathe normally.

Wondering how long to meditate instead? See how long you should meditate each day.

Sources

1. Balban MY, Neri E, Kogon MM, et al. Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine 2023;4(1):100895. PMC9873947.