The Nervous System & Stress

Our nervous system is continually responding to information from both inside and outside the body. The autonomic nervous system helps regulate processes that occur largely without conscious control, including heart rate, digestion and breathing, supporting the transition between states of activity and recovery.

Stress is a natural human response that helps us respond to challenges and potential threats. A certain amount of stress can be useful, while prolonged or excessive stress can affect both physical and mental wellbeing. The difficulty can arise when demands become persistent, and opportunities for recovery become limited. Rather than expecting ourselves to remain permanently calm, wellbeing can also involve developing ways to respond to stress, create space for recovery and recognise what we need.

Breathwork: Breathing is something we do automatically, but we can also consciously influence its pace and pattern, which gives breathwork a practical place within wellbeing. Research into slow, voluntary breathing has found it can increase heart-rate variability, a marker linked to the nervous system's ability to shift between activity and rest (Laborde et al., 2022). Breathwork isn't about controlling stress or forcing the body into a particular state; different approaches use different breathing patterns for different purposes. For some people, it can simply be a way of slowing down and creating a moment of space.

Mindfulness & awareness: Mindfulness offers another way of creating space between what we experience and how we automatically respond. Rather than trying to stop thoughts or achieve a particular state, it involves bringing attention to present moment experience with greater awareness and less automatic reaction. One meta-analysis found mindfulness interventions were associated with a small-to-moderate reduction in reported stress, though this research focused specifically on medical students and results may vary across other groups (Sperling et al., 2023).

Mindfulness doesn't have to mean sitting still with your eyes closed. It can begin with noticing. Noticing how we feel, what our body is asking for, when we're moving too quickly, and when we need rest, connection, movement or space.

Breathwork and mindfulness are just two practices among many that can support this, movement, adequate sleep, nourishing food, time outdoors and meaningful connection all play a part too. There is no single practice that works for everyone.