Printable breathing exercises

The reason these are printed as shapes rather than written as instructions is that counting in your head is a task, and a person who is already agitated is bad at tasks. Tracing a line with a finger is not a task. The shape does the counting, the finger keeps the attention somewhere other than the thought, and the breath slows because the shape is slow.

All four below can be printed straight from this page or drawn on paper in under a minute, which is the honest alternative to hunting for a PDF.

Box breathing

Four equal sides, four counts each: in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. Trace one side per phase. Used by people who need to be calm and alert rather than relaxed, which is why it circulates in military and emergency settings under this name.

Draw it as a square roughly the size of your palm and label the sides. The holds are the part beginners skip and the part that does the work — an empty hold at the bottom is uncomfortable for about three rounds and then stops being.

Star breathing

A five-pointed star, drawn in one continuous line. Breathe in going up a point, hold at the tip, breathe out coming down. Five points, five breaths, and the star is finished exactly when the exercise is.

This is the best one for children, for a reason worth knowing: it has a visible finish line. "Breathe until you feel calm" is an instruction with no end and therefore no comfort in it. "Finish the star" is achievable, and the calm arrives as a side effect rather than as a demand.

Rainbow breathing

Seven arcs, nested. Trace up and over one arc as you breathe in, back down the other side as you breathe out, then start the next arc. Seven full breaths by the time the rainbow is coloured in.

The version that works best is drawn large on one sheet, one colour per arc, and coloured as it is breathed — the colouring gives slow hands something to do, and slow hands are most of the point. Good for younger children who find the star's sharp corners hurried.

Five-finger breathing

The one that needs no paper at all, which makes it the only one that reliably gets used away from home. Spread one hand. With the index finger of the other, trace up the outside of the thumb while breathing in, and down the other side while breathing out. Five fingers, five breaths, and nobody can tell you are doing it.

Teach a child the star on paper and this one on their hand, and the second is the one that turns up at school.

Printing notes

Print at 100 percent rather than "fit to page", one shape per sheet, as large as the paper allows — a small shape produces small fast tracing, which defeats the purpose. If you laminate one, a whiteboard pen makes it reusable, and the tracing groove people wear into a laminated card over a year is a pleasant thing to notice.

An honest note on what this does

Slow breathing with a longer exhale reliably shifts the body toward a calmer state, and there is decent evidence for that. What these exercises will not do is treat an anxiety disorder, and anyone presenting them as treatment is overreaching. They are good at the specific job of interrupting a spike, and they work better if practised when nothing is wrong, because a technique first attempted mid-panic is a technique nobody remembers.

If the wider practice interests you rather than the emergency use, how to start meditating is the sensible next step, types of meditation covers what else is out there, and a daily routine for stress and anxiety puts the pieces in an order. For children's books that work in the same register, children's books about kindness. 365 Days of Meditation (ours, flagged) teaches the practice one page a day across a year.