Thousands of years ago our stress hormones were activated to keep us safe from woolly mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, floods and famines. But in modern day times, we have less woolly mammoths, and a lot more phone notifications, traffic, work deadlines, challenges of being a parent, and never ending to do lists. So our stress response is being triggered… over and over again.

The problem is, our nervous systems don’t differentiate between a sabre tooth tiger that could actually kill us, and an after-hours email from your boss.

It just knows that it's stressed, and that it needs to activate a series of physiological responses – such as the release of adrenalin and cortisol - to help you cope.

Chronically high cortisol is however tied to so many different health conditions.

One way to help this, is breathing. Yes, that thing you do automatically, you can also control. In fact it's the only part of your autonomic nervous system that you can also control.

Slowing your breath takes you out of fight or flight and into rest and repair. Out of a state of high alert, into calm.

In today's episode I've shared a simple 3 minute breathing practice that you can do anywhere at any time, to help you slow down, calm down, and destress.