I exhale worry and inhale gratitude.

Breathing exercises get dismissed as soft, which is odd given that a slow exhale measurably slows a heart rate. It's one of the only direct controls you have over your own nervous system.

The worry doesn't leave on the out-breath, though. That part oversells it. What changes is tempo — anxious thinking runs on fast, shallow breath, and it's genuinely hard to spiral at four breaths a minute.

Slow the body and the thoughts follow, a little, unevenly.

Six seconds out, longer than you went in. Four times, before the next thing you were about to do.