I Measured My Brain Waves While Box Breathing For 2 weeks, And Here Are The Results
Since I have gotten my BrainBit Mindo headband, I have been exploring which techniques help me the most in managing stress and anxiety
In today’s post, I am sharing the effects of one popular breathing technique known for its calming effects — box breathing or 4–4–4–4 breathing. This method involves inhaling for 4 seconds, holding the breath for 4 seconds, exhaling for 4 seconds, and holding it again for 4 seconds.
In this personal experiment, I was looking to measure how effective box breathing is at calming the brain after moments of high alertness. To measure my brainwave activity, I used an EEG device BrainBit Mindo. I recorded the levels of beta wave activity, which are linked to states of alertness, stress, and anxiety, to quantify whether the breathing technique could bring me back to a relaxed state after being in a high-alert condition.
What I did to measure
Given that the experiment is personal and I don’t have the variety of data from different people, I decided to do the same exercise every day for 2 weeks to get enough data points.
To test how effective the 4-4-4-4 breathing technique is on me, I did the following steps for each session where I measured beta wave activity:
- Baseline: Sitting quietly for 5 minutes.
- High-alert state: Induced using an 11 minute long NeuroVizr session, designed to create high cognitive and mental alertness.
- Post-breathing: Completing box breathing for 5 minutes using my Garmin Vivosmart 5 haptic breathing guide.
After collecting 2 weeks worth of data, I performed the Wilcoxon signed-rank test to analyse the significance in reduction of high alertness when performing 4–4–4–4 breathing compared to high stimulation NeuroVizr sessions.
Results
For each session, I recorded beta wave activity in each of the three conditions. Beta waves tend to increase when we are highly focused or stressed, and they decrease when we are calm and relaxed. After running the paired t-test on my data, I found a statistically significant reduction in beta wave activity when doing box breathing after the NeuroVizr session.
The results showed the p-value of 0.00148, which indicates that the reduction in beta wave activity was due to box breathing 🧘♀️ .
This experiment demonstrates that, for me, box breathing can be an effective tool for managing stress and restoring calm after mentally challenging tasks. Even though this was a personal, small-scale experiment, the findings align with existing research that suggests slow, controlled breathing techniques can help lower stress levels and improve mental clarity.
Conclusion
Box breathing has shown potential as a simple yet effective method for calming the mind after periods of high stress or mental strain for me. The reduction in beta wave activity observed in this experiment highlights the physiological impact of the technique, helping shift the brain from a high-alert state to one of relaxation.
Check out more of my personal EEG experiments:
