Go slowly enough to learn something about yourself, rather than only a technique. What is worth keeping is knowing which breath does what in your body.
One round is rarely enough to tell. Try a breath for a minute or two, stop, and check what shifted: the chest, the shoulders, how loud your thoughts are. If you are guiding someone else, leave the quiet for them to answer into rather than telling them what they should be feeling.
Qur’an and Sunnah
recite the Quran slowly and distinctly (Quran 73:4). Slowness there is not a delay before the real thing, it is what lets the thing land.
أَوۡ زِدۡ عَلَيۡهِ وَرَتِّلِ ٱلۡقُرۡءَانَ تَرۡتِيلًا
or a little more; recite the Quran slowly and distinctly
Qur’an 73:4read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
With 112 participants, breathing at six breaths a minute produced its psychophysiological effects whether or not a biofeedback display was added, which suggests the pace of the breath is doing the work rather than the equipment wrapped around it. That still leaves you to find out which pace suits you. The study measured group averages over short sessions, so it says little about how one person responds week to week.
Laborde S, Allen MS, Borges U, Iskra M, Zammit N, You M, Hosang T, Mosley E, Dosseville F. (2022). Psychophysiological effects of slow-paced breathing at six cycles per minute with or without heart rate variability biofeedback.. Psychophysiology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A technique is only useful later if you know what it does to you, and that takes noticing at the time.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Put a hand just below your ribs and let it move. Most of us breathe up in the chest, and the settling effect comes from lower down, where the diaphragm can actually shift.
Breath is the quickest way you have of turning your own nervous system up or down. Nothing else you can simply decide to do works on that timescale.
Hot yoga asks you to keep drinking all the way through the class. If forgetting to eat and drink is one of your regular problems, choose a different room.