A Grounding Breath and a Phrase: The Ten-Second Practice Behind Calm Days and Deeper Work

By Carolina Correa, Founder and Clinical Director, Numia Healing Center

A few weeks ago, a writer from Real Simple asked me a simple question: if I could give someone one tool for staying calm through an ordinary day, what would it be? My answer made it into her article, The #1 Mental Health Hack Therapists Recommend for Staying Calm All Day Long, and I am grateful she chose it, because it is a practice I use myself and one I teach to nearly everyone who walks through our door in Denver.

The article had room for the ten seconds. I wanted to write about what surrounds those ten seconds: why a breath and a phrase can hold so much, how I choose the words, and how this same small practice sits at the center of the deeper work we do at Numia, in preparation, on journey day, and in the weeks of integration that follow.

The practice itself

It goes like this. You take one slow breath in through the nose. Then you let the exhale out longer than the inhale, as if you were fogging a window. On that exhale, silently, you say a short phrase that steadies you. Mine is the one I shared with Real Simple.

I am here. I am safe. I can soften.

Each part of the phrase has a job. “I am here” brings you back into your body and the present moment, out of the email you keep rereading and the conversation you are rehearsing. “I am safe” speaks directly to the nervous system, which cannot always tell the difference between a hard meeting and a real threat; it is the reassurance the body needs before the mind will loosen its grip. “I can soften” is permission. It asks only that you release, a little, whatever you have been holding too tightly, the jaw, the shoulders, the story.

I suggest choosing your phrase in the morning, before the day has had a chance to shape you. Sit with it for a moment while the coffee brews. Then it is yours to return to: before a difficult conversation, in traffic, in the middle of a meeting that is going sideways. You can do it standing in line, and nobody around you will know. It takes about ten seconds, and it gets stronger every time you use it.

Why the exhale matters

When people ask me why something so small can work, I point to the body. Most of us were taught to manage stress from the neck up, to reason our way out of a racing heart. The body has its own language, and the breath is the one part of the stress response we can speak to directly. A long exhale is a signal that the moment has passed and it is safe to settle.

The research is catching up to what contemplative traditions have known for a long time. A 2023 randomized controlled study from Stanford compared three brief daily breathing practices with mindfulness meditation over a month, and the exhale-focused practice, which the researchers called cyclic sighing, produced the greatest improvement in mood and the largest drop in physiological arousal.¹ Five minutes a day, and the long exhale did the most.

The phrase and the breath belong together. The exhale tells the body it can stand down, and the words give the mind somewhere to rest while it does. Together they create a small pocket of stillness, wherever you happen to be standing.

Honoring the small practices, and noticing where they stop

Over the years of working as a therapist, I have come to deeply respect the small daily practices: the breath, the phrase, the walk after dinner, a quiet moment of checking in with yourself. They are powerful, they are free, and they keep the day from piling up on us. I would never want anyone to skip them in search of something bigger.

At the same time, I have watched many people practice beautifully, do years of good therapy, and still feel that something underneath had not moved. Some of what we carry lives below the reach of words and below the reach of a ten-second breath. It settled into the body long ago, often before we had language for it, and a daily practice can quiet it without quite touching it. That is where psilocybin-assisted therapy sits in my work: it is a way of gently entering those deeper layers, in a safe and legal setting, with a therapist beside you the whole time.

The same breath, in preparation

What surprises many people is how much of our work happens before the medicine is ever part of the day. In the preparation sessions, one-hour conversations in the weeks before a journey, we talk about intentions and history, and we also practice. I ask each person to find their phrase, the words that steady them, and to use the grounding breath every day until the journey.

There is a reason for this. A psilocybin experience can be tender, and it can be intense; there are moments when a wave of feeling arrives and the natural instinct is to brace against it. The safety guidelines that came out of the research at Johns Hopkins describe preparing people so that, when those moments come, they can trust, let go, and stay open.² That is much easier to do with a practice you have already worn smooth. “I am here. I am safe. I can soften” is, almost word for word, what the journey asks of us. Presence, safety, and the willingness to let go.

So on journey day, when I sit beside someone and the experience deepens, I often hear them return to their own breath without any prompting from me. Sometimes I simply breathe with them, a slow inhale and a longer exhale, until the body remembers what it already knows.

And in integration

After the journey, the practice takes on a new role. The integration sessions are where we make meaning of what came up, and where insight becomes choice. This is where the real work happens. Between those sessions, the breath and the phrase become the thread that runs from the journey back into an ordinary Tuesday.

Many people find that their phrase shifts after a journey. “I am safe” might become “I am held,” or “I can soften” might become “I can trust this.” Whatever the words, the ten seconds become a doorway back to what they touched in the experience. The practice that once kept the day from piling up now has a second job: to carry the journey forward, gently, into the life that was waiting for it.

Where the daily calm and the deeper work meet

I have come to see the daily practice and the deeper work as one continuum. The nervous system we soothe with a long exhale in traffic is the same nervous system we prepare for a journey, and the permission to soften is the same permission, offered at a different depth. We see the medicine experience as one part of a larger unfolding of insight, healing, and personal transformation, and the small practices are how that unfolding continues on the days when nothing dramatic happens at all.

If you take one thing from this, let it be the ten seconds. Choose your phrase tomorrow morning and notice how often you return to it. And if you have been practicing well, doing the good work, and still sense that something deeper is waiting, I would be glad to talk with you about whether psilocybin-assisted therapy might be part of your path.

Numia Healing Center is Denver’s second licensed psilocybin healing center, built around clinical facilitator therapists. Our therapists have guided over 200 legal psilocybin sessions, with clinical backgrounds in psychology, social work, and trauma-informed care, and our work has been featured by ABC News, The New York Times, 9News, the City of Denver’s Elevating Denver series, and now Real Simple. You can read more about psilocybin therapy in Denver, see our pricing, or book a free consultation whenever you are ready.

Sources

1. Balban, M. Y., Neri, E., Kogon, M. M., Weed, L., Nouriani, B., Jo, B., Holl, G., Zeitzer, J. M., Spiegel, D., & Huberman, A. D. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
2. Johnson, M. W., Richards, W. A., & Griffiths, R. R. (2008). Human hallucinogen research: Guidelines for safety. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22(6), 603 to 620. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881108093587
3. Bhagwat, R. (2026, September 24). The #1 Mental Health Hack Therapists Recommend for Staying Calm All Day Long. Real Simple. https://www.realsimple.com/best-mental-health-hack-12138714