Screen break

How to do it

1. Take your hands off the keyboard and move back a little from the screen. Plant your feet and rest your back. Look at something far away, like a window or the far wall, or close your eyes.
2. Breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds, without lifting your shoulders.
3. Breathe out through your nose for 4 seconds and let your shoulders sink with the air.
4. Rest for 2 seconds on empty, belly soft. Use the moment to blink slowly once or twice.
5. That's one cycle: 10 seconds. Repeat for 2 minutes, which is 12 breaths.
6. To finish, breathe at your own pace, blink a few times and decide what your next task is before you look back at the screen.

What it is

It's a three-part breath: 4 seconds in, 4 seconds out and a 2-second rest with empty lungs. All through the nose. Each cycle takes 10 seconds, so you breathe six times a minute for two minutes.

It's close to equal breathing, which has no rest, and to 5-5-2 breathing, which is a little slower. The difference is where you use it: not on a cushion or in bed but in your desk chair, with your eyes off the screen. The matching inhale and exhale keep it neutral; it neither revs you up nor makes you drowsy. That's why it works in the middle of a workday.

Where it comes from

This sequence is this site's own. It has no author and no tradition, and no study has tested it. It brings together three familiar things.

The first is the even rhythm, the equal-phase breathing that yoga calls sama vritti. The second is the pace: six breaths a minute, within what the review by Zaccaro and colleagues (2018) calls slow breathing, under ten breaths a minute. The 2-second rest at the end is our own choice, to set one cycle apart from the next.

The third comes from eye care. The American Academy of Ophthalmology explains that people blink about 15 times a minute, and only 5 to 7 times when using a screen. So it recommends blinking on purpose and looking up at something in the distance. That's where the far gaze and the blinking in this break come from.

There's also a popular idea: that we hold our breath at the screen. Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive, named it email apnea, or screen apnea, after noticing it in herself in 2007. According to an NPR report, she saw it in about 80% of the friends and colleagues she measured, in what the report calls kitchen table science. It's an informal observation, not a study.

What people use it for

To close one task before opening another. After sending a report, on leaving a video call, before moving from email to something that needs focus, when you haven't looked up in an hour. On your phone, too: after a long stretch of texting or social media.

Two minutes without a keyboard make you actually stop. The count takes up just enough attention to keep you from mentally rewriting the last email. Many people also notice where they were holding tension: shoulders up by their ears, a clenched jaw, a furrowed forehead.

What studies say

We found no studies of this sequence or of breathing breaks between screen tasks. What exists is about slow breathing in general. Zaccaro's 2018 review covered 15 studies: breathing slowly went along with higher heart rate variability and, in several, with greater feelings of relaxation and comfort. The authors caution that the studies were small and unlike one another.

A 2022 meta-analysis by Laborde and colleagues pooled 223 studies and found that vagally mediated heart rate variability rises while people breathe slowly and right after a single session.

As for the eyes, the blinking figure comes from patient guidance, not from a trial we have read. And screen apnea, for now, is an observation with no formal studies that we know of. This break promises nothing about your eyesight or your productivity: it's a rest with a shape.

What it feels like and what to notice

The first thing people tend to notice is how much they were clenching. Your shoulders drop a little in the first few exhales. Your eyes, looking far away, take a moment to focus. The 2-second rest on empty is short and rarely bothers anyone. If it bothers you, skip it.

Sometimes a yawn or a sigh shows up: let it out and pick the count back up. If you feel dizzy or tingly, breathe normally. If burning eyes, blurry vision or headaches keep coming back, that's a matter for an eye care professional, not for a breathing exercise.

Variations

• Easier (4-4 variation, no rest): in for 4 and out for 4, this guide's equal breathing.
• Shorter (one-minute variation): six cycles instead of twelve, between two calls.
• Slower (5-5-2 variation): five seconds in and five out, with the same rest.
• Standing (variation): get up and do it by a window, looking as far as you can.
• With your shoulders (variation): on the first three inhales, lift your shoulders toward your ears and let them fall as you breathe out. Then continue with your body still.

Common mistakes

• Doing it while looking at the screen. If your eyes stay in your inbox, so does your head.
• Trading the computer for your phone. The break is from both screens.
• Breathing big. These are medium, quiet breaths, not a lung capacity drill.
• Straining through the rest. It's 2 seconds of stillness, not a breath hold.
• Saving it for when your neck already hurts. It works better as a habit between tasks than as a fix at the end of the day.
• Staying in the same posture. Move your neck and shift position before you go back.

How often and how long

Two minutes each time. How often depends on your work: many people find it easier to tie it to task changes than to the clock, because then it interrupts nothing. Three or four times in a workday is a realistic amount.

If you can, pair it with getting up. A breathing break doesn't replace walking, drinking water or looking out the window. It gathers them into two minutes with a beginning and an end.

Before you start

• If you feel dizzy, tingly or short of breath, let the count go and breathe normally. You can do it without the rest.
• Don't do it while driving, or while walking and looking at your phone.
• If you have a heart, lung or blood pressure condition, check with your care provider first.
• Frequent burning eyes, blurry vision or headaches deserve a visit to an eye care professional.