There’s a good reason that focusing on breathing has been an essential part of yoga for literally thousands of years: Breathing and controlling your breath fundamentally affects your physiological state. Slow, deep breathing can directly influence the nervous system, heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormone levels and even brain activity.

We’ve touched on various benefits of breathing exercises in the past (see How To Relax When You’re Stressed Out).

But some breathing exercises, and certainly a nice, long yoga session, aren’t practical to do when you’re pressed for time… or you’re at work surrounded by colleagues. But that may be just the time when you need to de-stress the most. That’s why Ashton Jackson, writing for CNBC.com, focuses on research indicating that practicing a “breath hold” can help (which is something freedivers work on in order to swim under water for extended lengths of time).

What kind of time are we talking about? Shoot for three or four “holds” of 60 seconds. That’s time enough to train yourself to react calmly to the stress that a hold induces, according to researchers presenting at the NeuroLeadership Institute Summit. A 60-second hold may sound like an inordinate amount of time to hold your breath, but that’s what practice is all amount — increasing the time you can comfortably hold your breath, even if you start off with 20 or 30 seconds. The point is that healthy people are completely capable of holding their breath for up to 90 seconds even if, as Jackson writes, “your brain starts to send distress signals before you reach the milestone.”

Actually, though, that’s the point of the exercise: inducing some distress signals and gaining the confidence that you can calmly carry on anyway. The key is that your brain sends out alarms similar to those found in other anxiety-producing moments, such as prepping for a big presentation to management. Breathing can help you become accustomed to enduring and mitigating the stress.

The exercise is agreeably simple. Jackson describes four steps to get started:

“Close your eyes and relax your body”

“Take a few controlled, deep breaths”

“Take a deep inhale and hold it for 60 seconds, making sure to consciously reassure yourself when you start to feel panicked”

“Slowly release the breath and repeat three to five times”

Of course this exercise is only recommended for people in good health. Jackson emphasizes this point, citing a cautionary note from Healthline: “You may want to refrain from breathwork exercises if you have a condition like asthma and emphysema — and your lung capacity can decrease as you age, or if you’re pregnant.”

For people in good health, breathing exercises can lower your stress level significantly. And they may be the next best thing to a good yoga session.