I slow my breathing and watch the anxiety disappear.

Breathing is unusual among the body's systems in that it will accept instruction. Your heart rate takes no requests. Your digestion has never once consulted you. Breath sits on the border, running by itself and yet available.

That makes it a rare piece of two-way traffic — one of the few places where the deliberate part of you can say something the automatic part actually receives.

No counting scheme is required. Slowness itself is the message, and the message is roughly: nothing here needs sprinting away from.