How to Incorporate Breathing Exercises into Your Daily Routine

I was sitting down with my morning coffee, brow furrowed, staring at the blinking cursor on a blank document, trying to think of a breathwork topic to write about. So naturally, I took a deep breath out of habit to clear my mind, paused for a moment, and it hit me.

I can make 10,000 blog posts, videos, and courses with the best information about breathing I could possibly offer, but it's all useless if I don't provide tools, tips, and strategies that will help you incorporate breathwork into your daily routine. What's the point of doing all this if I don't give you insight on how to regularly apply what I teach?

This post is dedicated exactly to that — I'm going to lay out habits and structures that myself and other breathwork practitioners utilize to never miss a day of breathing. You'll also learn how to train your brain to remember to turn to breathing when feeling anxious or otherwise not good, apps and tools to help with structure, and other obscure tips that work like a charm.

By the end, you’ll have a variety of strategies that will help you fit breathing exercises into your daily life so you can truly experience the life of one that reaps the benefits of daily breathwork.

Now together let's take a big breath in, gently let go, and dive right in.

To be completely honest, this is the most effective way to establish a daily breathing exercise routine. If you nail this, you don't have to worry about anything else in this post.

Set a reminder somewhere you won't miss it to immediately begin a breathing exercise the moment your eyes flutter open in the morning. Don't get up, don't even sit up; just lie there in bed, play a breathing recording, and don't get up until you're done.

Not only is this an incredibly easy way to incorporate breathing into your daily routine, but you will benefit tremendously by making breathwork the very first thing you do in the morning. The first action you take upon waking sets the tone for the rest of your day, and making breathwork this action results in:

Gentle activities like deep breathing engages the rest-and-digest nervous system, promoting a state of calm and balance. This fosters a more relaxed and focused physiological state for the day ahead.

Starting with negative stimuli, like reading the news or ruminating, heightens anxiety and emotional reactivity which slowly poisons the rest of your day. Conversely, starting with soothing stimuli such as breathwork stabilizes emotions, fostering a stable sense of resilience and equanimity throughout the day.

Starting off rushed or engaging with reactive stimulus sets the stage for a chaotic and unmanageable day. On the other hand, a calm and intentional start such as breathwork signals to the mind that you are in control of your life experience, encouraging an optimistic, resilient, and capable mindset.

Intentional breathwork directly impacts hormonal regulation through reducing stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline), increasing the love hormone (oxytocin), and producing more mood lifters (serotonin), among others.

Cognitive priming is the idea that prior experiences influence how a person responds to a subsequent stimulus; think of it like a behavioral snowball effect. The brain is highly plastic and especially receptive upon waking — leverage this. Starting with a focused, purposeful action like breathing primes the brain for more sustained attention and motivation for the rest of the day.

While work can be a stress factory, remember that you always have the option to control your reactions by utilizing the breath to calm your mind — but how can you remember to calm down when you're worked up?

The straight truth is time and practice, there's no shortcut — but it will come naturally over time. One of the best ways to get there is to establish a regular pattern of breathwork throughout the day, and seeing as you're more than likely scrolling on your phone during your work breaks, why not breathe instead?

Remember, engaging with negative stimuli (social media) heightens anxiety and reactivity while choosing to engage with soothing stimuli (breathing) stabilizes your mood and puts you back in control of your mind & actions. Leverage your free time at work to breathe and consciously take back control of your day.

One of the most impactful books I've ever read is Atomic Habits by James Clear, I highly recommend it to anyone looking to break bad habits and establish forward-momentum ones.

In it, he goes over the idea of "Habit Stacking", which he describes as the art of pairing a new habit with an existing one. This strategy makes it easier to stick to your goals by building on routines you already have established.

Here's a few examples of how you can utilize habit stacking to add breathing to your daily routines:

• Breathe before checking your phone in the morning

• Breathe after getting dressed in the morning

• Breathe while your morning coffee is brewing

• Breathe in the work parking lot before going in

• Breathe in the gym parking lot before or after working out

• Breathe before staring at a screen in the evening

Whatever habit you choose, keep in mind that the key is to anchor your breathing exercises to something you already do daily so it becomes second nature.

I'm not a big tech guy and strongly advocate for as little screen time as possible, but I do recognize that apps and phones can be extremely helpful when used as a tool responsibly. To this day I use the Wim Hof Method app to follow along with the breathing when I'm stretched too thin or need extra motivation to get into the ice bath.

Using apps for reminders and/or guided sessions are a foolproof way to breathe at least once a day. Take a critical look at your regular schedule, figure out a time that you can commit a regular 15 minutes breathing practice to, and set a reminder on your phone to go off every day. Use a soothing sound without vibration so as to not spike your flight-or-flight response.

Are you in a chaotic phase of your life, have too much going on during the day, or just straight up not a morning person? Then set up a nightly breathing routine.

While a morning practice has a greater impact on the rest of your day, breathing in the evening has its own unique set of benefits - and is a hellevua lot better than not practicing breathwork at all. Perks from night time breathing include:

Evening breathwork provides an opportunity to observe, process, and release emotions experienced that day, preventing unresolved issues from disrupting sleep or carrying over into tomorrow.

There are certain breathing techniques that prepares the mind to enter a state of lucid dreaming and improve dream recall. Improving your dream state in this way helps creativity blossom and emotional processing in the waking realm.

The still nature of the night allows for deeper introspection during breathwork, which helps to reduce resistance to connecting with your intuition. Nurturing this bond with your higher self unlocks profound levels of self-awareness, creativity, and serenity.

We've all heard "Consistency is key", but tracking your progress is just as important. Time and time again, tracking progress has been shown to help human beings stay on track and motivated due to the following psychological mechanisms and principles:

• Provides a sense of accomplishment

• Reinforces a belief in capability and self-efficacy

• Increases accountability and commitment to the process

• Breaks goals into manageable steps to prevent becoming overwhelmed

• Engages the brain's problem-solving instinct

• Activates the Goal Gradient Effect (People work harder the closer they are to their goals)

• Strengthens emotional investment

• Establishes a sense of ownership

To help you stay on track, I threw together this free PDF download of a breathwork tracker calendar you can print out. At the end of every day, tally up how many times you practiced breathing. At the end of the month, add up the tallies to see how many times you practiced that month. Track your progress over the year with a line graph - you'll be amazed at how this little hack has a massive impact.