Folks, I was traveling over the weekend with my family to visit even more family—about 16 hours of driving total in our slightly dinged-up-but-paid-for Ford Explorer, touring all over New England. It was well-worth it and we had a lot of fun, but I'm a bit stressed today trying to get back to the normal pace of things.

Fortunately, my colleague Jessica Stillman has an apt and useful contribution to share—and of all things (funny how that happens), it's about how to deal with stress. It also fits in as the latest installment in my unofficial but ongoing series: "Really Easy Solutions to Life's Universal Problems."

It all comes from a five-hour podcast—which is about four hours longer than I'd be able to sit still and listen to—but that's why we're writing this here, instead. Here's Jess.

A kill switch for your stress response

Breathing. It's the most boring and natural thing in the world. We do it all day every day without thinking.

But a host of experts insist we really ought to take a minute to appreciate the incredible power of our breath, beyond simply being the top end of the funnel that provides oxygen into our bloodstreams.

You may have heard something similar from your yoga teacher, but now we have some hard science to point to that says changing how you breathe can have profound effects on your mental and physical health. Learning to breathe more deeply, for example, can turn around debilitating chronic health conditions, and simple breathing exercises can help cure insomnia.

Now, according to Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and Stanford professor, changing how you breathe can also halt stress in its tracks.

This insight comes from a massive five-hour podcast with ex-Navy Seal officer Jocko Willink. If that seems like an excessively hefty time commitment to you, Medium writer Charlotte Grysolle has helpfully excavated 15 actionable tricks from the conversation.

If you're at all interested in the broader conversation around body hacking and self-improvement, her article is well worth a read in full.

But one idea stuck out to me both for its simplicity and usefulness. Huberman terms it the "psychological sigh," and promises that you can use it to hijack your body's stress response, and instantly turn off that panicky feeling of mounting stress we all dread.

The trick is based on a simple fact of anatomy:

When you breathe in, your diaphragm and other muscles move in such a way that the chest expands, leaving slightly more room for your heart.

In response your heart expands a tiny bit as well, causing the blood within it to slow slightly.

"Neurons in the heart pay attention to the rate of blood flow, so they signal to the brain that blood is moving more slowly to the heart. The brain sends a signal back to speed the heart up. So, if your inhales are longer than your exhales, you're speeding up your heart," Grysolle explains.

The opposite happens when you breathe out. Everything contracts, heart included. Your blood speeds up and your heart slows. Which is just what you want to happen you're stressed and your heart is starting to pound.

So, "if you want to calm down quickly, you need to make your exhales longer and more vigorous than your inhales," Grysolle concludes.

So, how exactly do you accomplish that? You use the psychological sigh, which is a big phrase for a simple change to your breathing rhythms. It looks like this:

• Two short nasal inhalations through the nose;
• One long exhalation through the mouth.
• Repeat one to three times.

Other experts have suggested adding simple hand motions to this basic breathing pattern to distract your mind from racing thoughts and add to the stress-busting effects of the breathing pattern.

Both tricks rest on the same principle: Longer exhalations and slowed breathing act like a kill switch for your stress response.

Ironic, isn't it, since every time you've ever acted stressed out, people have probably told you to "take a deep breath." It turns out perhaps you ought to do the opposite.

7 things worth knowing today

• Newly introduced legislation seeks to protect individuals nationwide from being misrepresented by certain kinds of digital content known as "deepfakes." "Weaponized deception can be extremely harmful to our society," said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who authored the proposal. "This bill is meant to take us into the 21st century." The DEEPFAKES Accountability Act would provide prosecutors, regulators and victims with resources, like detection technology, to stand up against the threat posed by nefarious deepfakes. (ABC7 Chicago)
• Out of hundreds of American cities examined by a new study, only one saw the number of married households with children increase between 2016 and 2023: Odessa, Texas. (Business Insider)
• Nearly 8 in 10 U.S. parents say they've gone into debt to pay for kids' competitive extracurricular activities including athletics, music, dance, cheerleading, and others. About 9 in 10 of those who did so say one of their motivations is to provide better financial and educational opportunities including scholarships for college. (Lending Tree)
• One of them is underperforming in polls, and the other says he isn't even running for president, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) have agreed to participate in a televised debate. The debate, which will air on Fox during Sean Hannity's 9 p.m. prime-time program, will take place Nov. 30, the network announced. (The Hill)
• It's a sober event that doesn't feel like one: Inside L.A.'s booze-free dance party movement. (Yahoo News)
• After five days of marathon negotiating sessions that included the CEOs of Hollywood’s biggest studios, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers came to terms Sunday night on a contract good for three years, the standard length in the industry. Two successful votes must happen before the strike is over. First, boards of the WGA’s eastern and western branches must approve the deal. Then the 11,500 members themselves must vote for approval. (AP)
• Here's what we get on TV when there aren't any writers: One of the U.K.’s most infamous dating shows was quietly added to the Max streaming service last week. It's called Naked Attraction, and it's a game show in which a single “chooser” critiques and eliminates six potential dates standing on a stage by scrutinizing their fully nude bodies, which are gradually revealed one part at a time (faces are revealed last). (Hollywood Reporter)

Thanks for reading. Photo by Unsplash. Jess wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you bright and early tomorrow.