Stress is, to some degree, simply part of leadership. High stakes, incomplete information, constant decisions, rarely enough recovery — and external circumstances we can't always control. Left unmanaged, that chronic stress erodes our health, and as it does, it quietly erodes the composure, clarity and judgment our leadership runs on at the same time. (I made that case in full in the previous article.)
Which leaves a real conundrum. If we can't simply remove the stress, what can we actually do about it?
The answer is rarely as linear as "work less, rest more." It has more than one lever, and it's worth being honest about which ones we can actually pull. Here are four.
Lever 1: Energy management
Most leaders manage their time carefully. Far fewer manage their energy with the same attention, even though it matters more. You can spend eight hours at work and leave energized, or leave drained — the difference is in how you managed your energy, not your hours.
Energy management has two sides.
One is the load coming in. If we're carrying more than the body can sustain over the long run, easing that load may be necessary — and it's worth checking honestly whether it's truly impossible or only how it feels. Can we delegate more, postpone something, drop one commitment? Sometimes there's more room than the pressure lets us see. And sometimes, as in a startup racing to close its next round, there genuinely isn't.
The other side is finding where we leak energy unnecessarily, at work or in life. Common leaks include:
Unhealthy eating that leaves us flat
Doom-scrolling late into the night
Getting emotionally over-involved in conflicts
Ruminating over things we can't change
Relationships that consistently deplete us
An overcommitted social calendar
Spending decision-making energy on inconsequential things
Micromanaging what could be delegated
Closing a few of these often frees up more capacity than trying to find extra hours.
Lever 2: Improve the quality of our recovery
Not all "not working" time restores us equally. We might feel like we're resting when we collapse onto the couch to scroll, but it does little to bring the body back into balance.
The high-restoration alternatives are well known and often overlooked: light movement, quiet time in nature, real social connection, meditation, a massage, a session of non-sleep deep rest, a walk without the phone.
The leverage isn't finding more free time — it's spending the little we have on what actually refills the tank. Endless scrolling, gaming and other quick-hit rewards keep dopamine elevated and leave us needing more stimulation to feel the same, which is the opposite of recovery. The equation looks worse still when we sacrifice sleep, the highest-leverage recovery there is, for a late-night digital binge that drains us further.
Lever 3: Lower the stress load in real time
There's a third lever we tend to overlook entirely. Holding everything else constant — same workload, same hours — we can still reduce the wear-and-tear the body absorbs by regulating the nervous system directly, in the moment.
This is the lever most within our control on any given day. If we can't always reduce the objective stress, we can reduce the amplitude of the body's response to it and recover from each spike faster, by modulating the nervous system in real time. The breath is the most direct and effective tool for this, which is where the rest of this article goes.
Lever 4: Train the nervous system itself
The first three levers work with the nervous system we have. The fourth changes it.
How well we navigate stress — and how quickly we bounce back from each spike — is, to a large degree, a function of the flexibility and resilience of our nervous system. And that can be trained.
Our autonomic nervous system has two branches that pull in opposite directions: the sympathetic, our accelerator, which primes the body for action; and the parasympathetic, our brake, which governs rest and recovery. We're built to move fluidly between them — a spike of activation to meet a demand, then a return to recovery once it passes. A flexible, resilient nervous system is simply one that can shift cleanly in both directions: mobilise fully when it needs to, and settle just as readily when the demand is over.
The problem of modern work, which AI only sharpens, is that many of us now live with the accelerator pressed down most of the day and rarely touch the brake. The range narrows. Coming back down gets harder.
Just as physical training gradually changes the body, regular breath practice gradually strengthens the nervous system itself. The temporary calm of a single session — an altered state — becomes, with consistency, an altered trait: a baseline that is steadier before pressure even arrives, and faster recovery after activation. In weeks it shows up as higher resting heart rate variability, a marker of a more flexible nervous system, alongside better emotional regulation and clearer thinking. As little as five minutes a day is enough to start shifting that baseline over the course of a few weeks.
This is the lever with the longest reach. The other three help us manage the load; this one raises the floor we operate from.
Why is the breath a direct line into the nervous system?
Most of the time, our breathing runs on its own. But unlike heart rate or blood pressure, we can also take the wheel whenever we choose.
That makes the breath unusual: it's a direct line into the autonomic nervous system — the part of us that governs stress and recovery, and that otherwise operates well below conscious reach. It's the one autonomic function we can also consciously control, which makes it both a way to read our state and a way to change it.
What are the main ways to engage the body's recovery branch?
The vagus nerve is the main wiring of the parasympathetic, the body's recovery branch and the brake on the stress response. The breath is one of the few direct ways to press that brake on purpose. There are several handles we can pull; these three are the main ones, and they stack:
Pace. Slowing the breath to roughly five or six breaths a minute brings it into rhythm with the body's own cardiovascular cycles — the natural rise and fall of heart rate as we inhale and exhale. This is often called resonance breathing, because at that pace the systems oscillate together instead of fighting each other.
Depth and shape. Anchoring the breath low — letting the belly and lower ribs expand rather than lifting the chest and shoulders — engages the diaphragm and stimulates the vagus more directly. High, shallow chest breathing does the opposite; it's the pattern the body associates with threat.
Inhale-to-exhale ratio. Lengthening the exhale relative to the inhale leans into the recovery response, because the parasympathetic brake engages most strongly as we breathe out.
Underneath all three is a single idea. The body doesn't take orders from the mind; it reads signals. Fast, shallow, high-chest breathing is one of the signals it uses to conclude there's a threat; slow, low breathing with a longer exhale is the opposite signal. We're not telling ourselves to calm down; we're giving the body the physiological evidence that it's safe to.
The measurable result is a rise in heart rate variability, the beat-to-beat flexibility that marks a resilient, adaptive nervous system. It's also the number many leaders already track on a ring or a watch, which is why this is one of the few interventions whose effect we can watch land in near real time.
How does breath turn the stress loop around?
Stress makes breathing fast and shallow, and fast, shallow breathing feeds the stress. (I describe this loop in more detail in the previous article.)
Functional breathing runs that loop the other way. Instead of letting the body's state drive the breath, we use the breath to settle the body. We're not forcing calm through willpower; we're changing the physiology that calm depends on.
What do leaders notice — measured and felt?
The leaders I work with describe two kinds of change: effects they can measure on their devices, and effects they simply feel. Both point to the same shift.
The measured changes, after a few weeks of practice:
Higher heart rate variability, visible on their wearables
Lower resting heart rate, and lower blood pressure
Deeper, more consolidated sleep, with fewer interruptions
Reduced inflammation, showing up as reduced CRP and calmer symptoms of autoimmune disease
The felt changes:
Waking up feeling more vital
Physical tension and pain easing
A calmer, more stable baseline through the day
Higher and more consistent energy
"I noticed that my sleep was deeper than usual. My HRV increased significantly. Besides my subjective experience, I could also see it from the measurement." — Rudi Adigbli, Founding Partner, ReeWire Ventures
"Last year I slept between three and four hours, and that was not good sleep — I was always tired during the exam. This time I have almost seven hours of sleep every day, because I was able to get into the peace where I could sleep again." — Katlehyn Jotty, Lawyer-to-be (used intentional breathing during her Staatsexamen)
"It was the very first session. I had severe back pain, and the practice created so much space in my rib cage that all of a sudden a lot of the pain that was residing there disappeared." — Mihai Streza, Founder & CEO, wondder
From a moment of relief to a steadier baseline
There are two distinct kinds of benefit here, and both matter.
One is the in-the-moment reset. A few minutes of slow, low breathing with a longer exhale is enough to shift the body: heart rate settles, heart rate variability rises, and the mind clears enough to respond rather than react. It's worth using before a hard conversation, between back-to-back meetings, or ahead of a decision we can't take back — and it's available right now, for free.
The deeper value is cumulative. Practised regularly, functional breathing shifts the baseline — how regulated we are before the pressure even arrives. We're not just recovering faster after stress; we're raising the floor we operate from.
That's the throughline across both parts. Our health sets the ceiling on our leadership. Our breath is one of the most direct levers we have to protect that health, in the moment and over the long term, and to steady the state our best thinking depends on.
Sources & further reading
Kromenacker et al., Psychosomatic Medicine (2018) — slow breathing, heart rate variability and vagal tone.
Fincham et al., Scientific Reports (2023) — meta-analysis of breathwork on stress, anxiety and depression.
Garg et al., International Journal of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Risk and Prevention (2023) — breathing exercises and blood pressure.
Laborde et al., Journal of Clinical Medicine (2019) — slow-paced breathing, sleep and vagal activity.
Hasuo et al., Frontiers in Medicine (2020) — resonance breathing and sleep quality.
Kox et al., PNAS (2014) — breathing practice and the inflammatory response.
Bechara & Damasio, Cerebral Cortex (2000) — body signals and decision-making (somatic markers).
Bates et al., Psychophysiology (2026) — resonance breathing and the brain's autonomic network.
Gross et al., Work (2023) — heart rate variability as a predictor of workability and vitality.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can breathing protect health when the stress itself can’t be removed?
Because we can change the body’s response to stress even when we can’t change the workload. Slow, low breathing with a longer exhale lowers the amplitude of each stress spike and speeds recovery from it, reducing the wear-and-tear the body absorbs over time.
What are the levers a leader actually has over chronic stress?
Four: managing energy rather than only time, improving the quality of recovery, lowering the stress load in real time by regulating the nervous system, and training the nervous system itself so its baseline becomes steadier and more resilient.
Why is the breath a “direct line” into the nervous system?
Because it is the one autonomic function we can also consciously control. Heart rate and blood pressure run automatically, but breathing can be taken over at will — which makes it both a way to read our state and a way to change it.
What changes do leaders actually notice?
Measured changes on wearables include higher heart rate variability, lower resting heart rate and blood pressure, deeper sleep and reduced inflammation. Felt changes include waking more vital, easing tension, a calmer baseline and steadier energy.
What is the difference between the immediate and the long-term benefit?
The immediate benefit is an in-the-moment reset — a few minutes of slow breathing settles heart rate and clears the mind before a hard conversation or decision. The cumulative benefit is a steadier baseline: practised regularly, breathing raises the floor we operate from before pressure even arrives.