17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson teaches Hero Breathing, a three-step technique to calm stress: leave the chaotic scene, sit knee-to-knee in Hero's pose, then breathe through your nose with a longer exhale to settle your nervous system.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we blew up some belly balloons with our kids. We breathed in through our noses, down into our bellies. Can you make that balloon pop? Then we breathed back out through our noses, slightly longer than the inhale. Ah. Repeat. Especially when things start to get a little out of control. Which leads us to another little practice we've been playing around with at the Johnson house. Note to self, this is a really effective practice. Do it more. So you know those times when your kids start to get a little, shall we say, frazzled, which leads to you and or your spouse, in my case me, getting equally, shall we say, frazzled. I know that reasonably well. So rather than let it all devolve into a circus, when I'm being Mr. Wise and mindful Philosopher Guy, I remember to do wise and mindful things to smooth out the rough seas. This practice has proven to be particularly powerful. Step one. Emerson and I leave the scene of the chaos by going to a different room in the house. Step 2. We sit knee to knee in what's wonderfully known as Hero's pose. To strike this pose, basically kneel on the floor and drop your butt on your ankles. Use bolsters if necessary. And check out a link we have to Yoga Journal for tips. Step three. Sit up. We sit up nice and tall and look each other in the eye as we pull the thread through our heads, breathing in deeply through our noses into our bellies. Then exhaling through our noses slightly longer than our inhale. Repeat in just a few breaths. Our nervous systems are calmed down and we're connected. Sergius has left town. It's actually shocking how powerful this is. The hard part, as always, is remembering to do it in the moment we need to do it. Note to self, do it more often. That's today's plus one. Circus come to town. Try some hero breathing today. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me. Hey guys, this is Brian with a quick little. P.S. i'm really excited to let you know about an event we're working on. Plan is to make it the premier self optimizing event of 2020. We're calling it Optimize 2020. You the modern hero. Basic idea. Five days. 101 world class luminaries. One million people. You can learn more and get your tickets to the online and offline event. At Optimize Me 2020 again. That's Optimize Me2020. Hope to see you there.
