Can a simple breathing routine lower stress?
10 Minutes of Slow Breathing, Twice a Day: A 12-Week Trial in Stressed Students
· By Anthony Falcone
Verdict: Keep it, with a caveat. Promising: those who kept practising reported less stress, anxiety and depression through exam season. But half the breathing group dropped out, which makes the result shakier. The hard part isn't the technique — it's doing it.
What the researchers tested
Paramedic students — a group with high rates of stress and anxiety — were randomly assigned to a breathing routine or to their usual university support.
The routine: slow nasal breathing, 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out, then a 2-second pause after the exhale, for 10 minutes twice a day, guided by a video and an audio track.
The final questionnaires landed in exam season, a deliberately tough moment to test it.
What they found
Compared with controls, the breathing group reported lower stress, anxiety and depression and higher resilience, with medium-to-large effects. Insomnia and overall wellbeing didn't change significantly.
Controls' distress rose during exams; the breathing group's didn't.
Participants described it as a tool they could reach for, though many struggled to fit it into their day or simply forgot.
What this means for you
- Slow breathing at roughly 5 breaths a minute is free, safe for most people and worth trying for stress.
- Attach it to something you already do — after brushing your teeth, before opening your laptop — because consistency was the main problem here.
- Don't expect it to fix sleep on its own; insomnia didn't improve in this trial.
How much to trust it
- Big dropout: only 24 of 49 in the breathing group were analysed, versus 42 of 49 controls, so the people who stayed may have been the ones it suited.
- Practice was self-reported, and there was no comparison with another breathing method or an active control.
- Results come from one specific group of students and rely on questionnaires.
The study
Little A, Stainer M, MacQuarrie AS, Wiseman N, et al. Examining the Effectiveness of Breathwork to Improve Resilience and Psychological Wellbeing While Reducing Anxiety, Depression, Stress, and Insomnia in Paramedicine Students: A Single-Blind Randomised Controlled Trial. Stress and Health, 2026. doi.org/10.1002/smi.70161
Our Breathwork Protocol gives you five techniques matched to outcomes — from instant calm to focus — with step-by-step instructions. See the protocol