Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress

It’s one of the first things par­ents and teach­ers tell a child who gets upset: “Take a deep breath.” But research into the effect of deep breath­ing on the body’s stress response has over­whelm­ing­ly ignored young chil­dren – and stud­ies done with adults typ­i­cal­ly take place in a uni­ver­si­ty lab, mak­ing them even less applic­a­ble to children’s actu­al lives.

A new study by Stan­ford researchers is the first to show that tak­ing just a few slow, deep breaths sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces young children’s phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal. By mea­sur­ing the effects in nat­u­ral­is­tic set­tings such as day camps and play­grounds, the study is also ground­break­ing for its design, which more close­ly reflects a child’s expe­ri­ence than a study in a lab would.

What’s more, the short, ani­mat­ed video devel­oped for the study is now freely avail­able online, pro­vid­ing a proven tool that can be used in the class­room to intro­duce chil­dren to deep breath­ing as a way to self-reg­u­late. It can also help par­ents pre­pare kids for a poten­tial­ly stress­ful sit­u­a­tion – a vac­cine appoint­ment, say, or a hol­i­day gathering.

This study is the first to show that tak­ing a few slow, deep breaths in an every­day set­ting can have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on a child’s stress phys­i­ol­o­gy,” said the study’s lead author, Jele­na Obradovic, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion (GSE) and direc­tor of the Stan­ford Project on Adap­ta­tion and Resilience in Kids (SPARK Lab). “But just telling chil­dren to take a deep breath may not be enough – chil­dren need scaf­fold­ing. So we’re excit­ed that we can also offer an easy-to-use tool to help kids learn this technique.”

The study, which was coau­thored by GSE research asso­ciate Michael J. Sulik and doc­tor­al stu­dent Emma Arm­strong-Carter, was pub­lished on Nov. 16 in the jour­nal Devel­op­men­tal Psy­chobi­ol­o­gy.

Designing a realistic field experiment

Mind­ful­ness prac­tices that incor­po­rate deep breath­ing, such as yoga and med­i­ta­tion, have found their way into the class­room at many schools. But pri­or to this study, research had not clear­ly shown whether slow-paced breath­ing itself could sig­nif­i­cant­ly alter a young child’s phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress response, the researchers said.

They set out to iso­late the activ­i­ty of breath­ing and inves­ti­gate its impact – tak­ing prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions into account, includ­ing the like­li­hood that young chil­dren might not have the capac­i­ty for even a cou­ple of min­utes of deep breath­ing, and that they would need help learn­ing how to do it.

When you ask young chil­dren to take a deep breath, many don’t real­ly know how to slow­ly pace their inhale and exhale, if they haven’t had any train­ing,” Obradovic said. “It’s not intu­itive for young kids. They are more suc­cess­ful in tak­ing sev­er­al deep breaths if they have a visu­al guide.”

To help ele­men­tary school­ers learn the tech­nique, the researchers worked with a team of artists at Rogue­Mark Stu­dios, based in Berke­ley, Calif., to pro­duce a one-minute video. The ani­mat­ed video shows young chil­dren how to slow­ly inhale by pre­tend­ing to smell a flower and to exhale by pre­tend­ing to blow out a candle.

From a prag­mat­ic point of view,” Obradovic said, “we thought a very short sequence, four breaths, seemed doable for this age group.”

For their ran­dom­ized field exper­i­ment, the Stan­ford researchers recruit­ed 342 young chil­dren – 7 years old, on aver­age – with their par­ents’ per­mis­sion, at a children’s muse­um, a pub­lic play­ground and three full-day sum­mer camps in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

Rough­ly half of the chil­dren were assigned to a group to watch the ani­mat­ed video with the deep breath­ing guid­ance. The rest watched an infor­ma­tion­al video that fea­tured sim­i­lar ani­mat­ed images but did not involve the breath­ing exercise.

All of the chil­dren were shown their assigned video in small groups, at tables set up adja­cent to the site from where they were recruit­ed, to main­tain a nat­ur­al set­ting for the study. Also in keep­ing with the real-life approach to the study design, the researchers did not mon­i­tor chil­dren or pro­vide extra encour­age­ment to imple­ment the deep breath­ing instruction.

This “inten­tion-to-treat” approach – ana­lyz­ing all sub­jects, whether or not they engaged with the inter­ven­tion – is wide­ly con­sid­ered to pro­vide more insight into the poten­tial effec­tive­ness of the inter­ven­tion once it is applied in every­day group set­tings, like class­rooms, where not every­one is like­ly to take part, Obradovic said.

Measuring the body’s response to everyday challenges

Researchers mea­sured two bio­mark­ers in all of their recruits: heart rate and res­pi­ra­to­ry sinus arrhyth­mia (RSA), which refers to the chang­ing pace of the heart­beat when a per­son inhales and exhales.

RSA plays an impor­tant role in influ­enc­ing heart rate, Obradovic said, and it has been linked to children’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late their emo­tions, focus their atten­tion and engage in tasks.

When it comes to mea­sur­ing the effects of deep breath­ing on stress phys­i­ol­o­gy, RSA seems to be the most appro­pri­ate bio­mark­er,” said Obradovic. “RSA is the only pure mea­sure of the activ­i­ty of the parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem, the sys­tem we’ve evolved to help us deal with every­day chal­lenges – the kinds of chal­lenges that don’t require a flight-or-flight response.”

The change in the mea­sures was pro­found: RSA increased and heart rate decreased only in response to the deep-breath­ing video, and the effects were greater dur­ing the sec­ond half of the video, which includ­ed most of the deep breath­ing prac­tice. The chil­dren in the con­trol group showed no change in either measure.

Our find­ings showed that guid­ing a group of chil­dren through one minute of a slow-paced breath­ing exer­cise in an every­day set­ting can, in the moment, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er the aver­age lev­el of phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal,” Obradovic said.

Fur­ther research should exam­ine the effect of deep breath­ing in this age group after a stress­ful or chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ence, she said. “But the fact that chil­dren of this age can down­reg­u­late their stress phys­i­ol­o­gy even when they’re rel­a­tive­ly calm offers promise that the tech­nique will be even more effec­tive when they’re frus­trat­ed or upset.”

– Car­rie Spec­tor is the senior com­mu­ni­ca­tions asso­ciate at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion. This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion.

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