5-5-2 breathing

How to do it

1. Sit with your feet on the floor and your back upright but not stiff, or lie on your back. Keep your mouth closed and your tongue relaxed.
2. Breathe in through your nose for 5 seconds, without filling all the way up.
3. Breathe out through your nose for 5 seconds. Let out the air that wants to leave, without wringing out your lungs.
4. At the end of the exhale, rest for 2 seconds on empty. You don't close your throat or clamp anything: nothing happens, and that's the point.
5. Breathe in again for 5 seconds and repeat. Each cycle takes 12 seconds.
6. Keep going for 5 minutes, which is 25 cycles. If the rest leaves you hungry for air, skip it for a couple of cycles and come back to it.
7. To finish, take a few breaths without counting and notice where your breathing has settled.

What 5-5-2 breathing is

It's coherent breathing 5-5 with one addition: a 2-second rest after the exhale, with your lungs empty. That rest takes the cycle from 10 seconds to 12, and the pace drops from six breaths a minute to five.

It isn't box breathing: there's no hold with the air in, and the pause is short. It isn't a long breath-hold practice either. The rest is the still point of the wave, not an effort.

Where it comes from

Nobody invented this pattern, and it has no name of its own. It's a simple variation on coherent breathing, and we found no text or school to credit it to.

It does have two relatives with a clear origin. The first is Stephen Elliott's coherent breathing, which his website defines by a nominal rate of five breaths a minute. At 12 seconds a cycle, 5-5-2 lands on exactly that pace.

The second comes from research. In 2017, Russell and colleagues studied slow diaphragmatic breathing that included a rest after the exhale, and compared it with the same breathing without the rest.

What people use it for

The pause gives your attention somewhere to land. Some people find that coherent breathing without pauses turns mechanical, and that those 2 seconds of stillness keep them from speeding up.

People use it to slow down at the end of the day, before meditating, or as a stepping stone toward slower patterns. It also helps you notice whether you're really finishing the exhale or starting the next inhale early.

What the studies say

We found no studies of the 5-5-2 pattern itself. The closest is the 2017 work by Russell and colleagues, with 40 people. Each one tried diaphragmatic breathing at about six breaths a minute with and without a rest after the exhale. With the rest, heart rate was lower and one component of heart rate variability, the high-frequency one, went up. Other measures didn't change, and without the rest the low-frequency component was higher. The authors conclude that the role of the pause needs more study.

A 2021 study of 64 athletes tested much shorter pauses, 0.4 seconds, within breathing at six a minute. Those pauses didn't change the measure of vagal activity the researchers used.

The rest of the evidence is the evidence for slow breathing in general: a 2018 review of 15 studies in healthy people describes higher heart rate variability and more reported relaxation. In short, the pause is a reasonable preference, not a proven advantage.

What it feels like and what to notice

The rest on empty is the new part. At first it can bring a slight urge to breathe in. If it's mild and goes away when you inhale, that's normal. If it builds cycle after cycle, you're exhaling too much or breathing too little: take in a bit more air or shorten the rest.

Done well, the pause feels like the quiet between two waves. Drop the practice and breathe normally if you get dizzy, tingly, tight in the chest or panicky.

Variations

• Easier (variation): 5-5-1, with just one second of rest, or coherent breathing 5-5 with no pause.
• Shorter (variation): 4-4-2, if 5 seconds feels long. It's the pattern in "Screen break."
• Slower (variation): 5-5-3 or 6-6-2, only once 5-5-2 feels comfortable for the full 5 minutes.
• With a long exhale (variation): 4-6-2, the pattern this guide uses for belly breathing.

Common mistakes

• Forcing yourself empty to reach the pause. The exhale ends by itself. The rest starts where the air stops leaving.
• Closing your throat. Nothing clamps during the pause. If someone spoke to you, you could answer.
• Gulping air after the rest. If you need to gasp, the rest was too long for today.
• Stretching the pause out of ambition. Here it's 2 seconds. Long holds are a different practice with different precautions.
• Counting the 2 seconds with tension. Think "one, two" and let go.

How often and how long

Five minutes once a day is enough to get to know it. If you like it, you can do two sessions: one in the morning and one in the late afternoon.

No dose has been studied for this pattern. If the pause bothers you one day, do coherent breathing 5-5 and come back to the rest another day.

Before you start

• If you get dizzy, tingly or anxious for air, drop the pattern and breathe normally.
• Never in water and never while driving.
• If you have a history of panic attacks or fainting, a heart, lung or blood pressure condition, or you're pregnant, check with your care provider first.
• The rest is 2 seconds. Don't stretch it on your own in this practice.