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What's the Fastest Way to Reset My Nervous System At Work?

  • Writer: Clare Pemberton
    Clare Pemberton
  • 1 day ago
  • 4 min read

I am not going to suggest a twenty-minute meditation you will never actually do. Most of the people I work with are in back-to-back meetings, managing a team, or trying to get through an inbox before lunch. What actually helps in the middle of that is something that takes under two minutes, requires no equipment, and can be done sitting at your desk without anyone noticing.


The tools below are meant to interrupt a spiral before it takes hold, or to help you come down from one that already has. Here are four techniques I use with clients regularly.


Tool #1: Extended Exhale Breathing

Lengthening your exhale relative to your inhale sends a direct signal to your nervous system that it is safe to settle. Research on this specific pattern found that breathing at around 4.5-6.5 breaths per minute (also called coherent breathing) does the best job of balancing the stress response for most adults (Scientific Reports, 2025).


How to do it: Breathe in through your nose for a count of four. Breathe out slowly through your mouth for a count of six to eight. Repeat for about a minute. You can do this with your eyes open, mid scroll, or while pretending to read an email you have already read three times.


Tool #2: The Physiological Sigh

This one works fast, often within a breath or two, which makes it useful when you do not have even a full minute to spare. Popularised by Dr Andrew Huberman, it involves two inhales through the nose, followed by one long, slow exhale through the mouth (with an audible sigh, if you want!). Research on single session breathing interventions has found measurable, acute improvements in cognitive performance and stress response even from a single short practice (Frontiers, 2023).


How to do it: Inhale through your nose. At the top of that breath, take a second, shorter sip of air through your nose. Then release everything in one long exhale through your mouth. Repeat once or twice more.


Tool #3: Orienting

This is a simple somatic technique that does not involve the breath at all. Anxiety tends to narrow our focus inward, and orienting works by deliberately widening it back out. It gives your nervous system evidence that you are safe in this room, right now, rather than wherever your mind has gone.


How to do it: Look around the space you are in. Let your eyes land on five things. Name them silently - notice the colour, the texture, the shape. That is it! It sounds almost too simple, but it works because it pulls your attention out of threat mode and back into the present environment.


Tool #4: A Sixty Second Body Scan

You do not need to lie down or close your eyes for a body scan to be useful. A short one at your desk can catch tension before it builds into a headache or a tight jaw you do not notice until 4pm.


How to do it: Starting at your feet, move your attention slowly upward. Notice your feet on the floor, your sit bones on the chair, your stomach, your shoulders, your jaw. You are not trying to relax anything on purpose. Just noticing where you are holding tension is often enough to soften it slightly.


When To Use Which One

There is no strict rule here, but a few patterns tend to hold. Before a hard conversation, extended exhale breathing is a good choice, since it gives you a minute to settle before you walk in. In the middle of something acutely stressful, the physiological sigh works faster than almost anything else. Orienting is useful when your mind has spiralled somewhere unhelpful and you need to come back into the room. The body scan works well for that mid-afternoon crash, when you are not panicked exactly, just depleted and disconnected from your body without quite noticing it happened.


A Gentle Note

These tools help in the moment, but they are not, on their own, going to resolve chronic workplace stress, a pattern of burnout, or anxiety that has deeper roots. Think of them as first aid, useful and worth having on hand, but not the same thing as addressing what is underneath. If you find yourself needing these tools multiple times a day just to get through work, that is usually a sign worth paying attention to rather than pushing past.


These are some of the techniques I work through with clients, and they are at the centre of the workshops I run for teams and organisations in Hong Kong, giving people practical, evidence-informed tools for regulating stress at work rather than generic wellness content that does not actually change anything day to day. We star with these simple techniques, and as your confidence in regulation and body awareness increases, we employ more complex techniques for lasting change.


If you would like to talk about bringing a workshop like this to your team, or if you are looking for individual support, I would love to hear from you. You are welcome to book a 15-minute discovery call to see if it feels like the right fit.


Warmly,

Clare


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