Have you ever realised you’re holding your breath while answering emails? I hadn’t—until I did. This episode of Joy At Work dives into a phenomenon called email apnea, and trust me, once you notice it, you won’t stop noticing.

I’ll share how a former Microsoft exec stumbled on this strange breathing pattern, why it matters to our energy, focus, and joy, and what I’ve been experimenting with to breathe better—even while emailing.

You’ll hear:

• The origin story of email apnea
• What dancers and test pilots know about breath that we don’t
• Six small, weird (but wonderful) experiments to reset your breathing
• How movement, breathing apps, and even watching a dog can help!

This one’s short but mighty. If your workday feels heavier than it should, this may be why.

🎧 Prefer video? Watch all my Joy at Work Experiments on YouTube:

🔗 Watch the Experiments on YouTube

🔍 Explore more episodes on joyful movement & breathing:

• Pain-Free Work with Rune Abo
• Movement is Medicine with Jon Field
• Lawrence van Lingen on YouTube

🌬️ Curious to experiment more?

👉 Check out all the Joy At Work Experiments

Hey there, I'm Lucia Knight and this is the Joy At Work Podcast.

If you've been listening for a while, you'll know that experimentation

is a philosophy that underpins my method of career design.

I believe it's the only way to make big and small changes likely at our age.

It's so easy to try out new things that when we do it often enough, we build a

certain work life dynamism that often gets lost when we work for 20 or 30 years.

I believe there's so much that in season two of the podcast I

gave you about 25 experiments that you could try out at work.

Most of those could be done in less than 10 minutes.

So go check them out if you want to build in some lean muscled

adaptability into your work life.

And today I've got a new experiment for you to try out.

Now, this might be a weird topic, but we've covered lots of seemingly weird

topics that impact stress and joy at work.

This week I want to talk about something that I've been trying

to change for myself since I discovered it, and it's been so hard.

And I wonder if maybe you've noticed it yourself.

Let me start with a story about how this weird thing was discovered.

Back in 2007 Linda Stone, a former Microsoft executive, sits down

to tackle her inbox and realizes she's doing something weird.

She's inhaling in anticipation, but not exhaling.

Emails keep pouring in, and she's just holding her breath.

This is where I leaned in.

She started wondering, is this just me or are other people doing this too?

So she did a little kitchen table experiment.

She recruited friends and she said at monitors, and guess what,

80% of them were also holding their breath or breathing really

shallowly while working on a screen.

She called it screen apnea like sleep apnea, but with your eyes wide

open and staring at your screen.

Now, I don't get it with all screens, but when I analyze my own

breath, it only seems to happen when I'm reading or writing emails.

And emails are how I run my business.

I suffer from email apnea.

Here's the really intriguing thing in Linda's experiment, the 20%

who were not holding their breaths were trained performers, dancers,

singers, a test pilot, even a cellist.

People who had learned to breathe while focused.

So what's going on with the rest of us?

Science journalist, James Nestor, who wrote the book Breath.

Says, most of us have forgotten how to breathe properly.

We breathe through our mouths, we breathe into our chests.

We hold our breath without realizing.

And when we're hunched over our screens all day, our bodies

literally can't take a breath.

So what happens?

We go shallow.

Our brains get stress signals.

Suddenly focus is gone.

Moods are low.

Decision making gets foggy and energy depletes.

But here's the good news.

You can retrain your body to breathe well, even when emailing.

I've been doing a little work on this daily and it's really hard.

How is something so natural, so hard?

So if you think you might be holding your breath while emailing or just

looking at screens, here's some ideas to experiment with getting your breath back.

Experiment one.

Become aware.

Just check in with yourself a few times a day.

Are you holding your breath while scrolling?

While reading emails, while writing emails, or while doing

some other online activity?

Are you breathing shallowly?

If you are, try and catch it.

If you catch it once, take a few slow.

Deep nose breaths as a reset.

Experiment number two, watch a baby or a dog.

Seriously.

Healthy dogs and infants breathe perfectly.

Their bellies rise and fall.

Their breath is soft, slow, and through the nose.

That's the gold standard.

Experiment number three, try out an instrument.

Linda Stone, the person who coined the phrase screen

apnea, took up an instrument.

Then ballroom dancing both helped with her posture and

awareness of mindful breathing.

Now, I'm a swimmer, and one of the reasons I feel so good after even the

shortest of swims is that I've been doing big deliberate breaths and I feel

more relaxed, more able to deal with stress and just happier after swimming.

Experiment number four.

Step away from the blue light.

Move away from the screen.

Do it now.

Stand up, stretch out, and breathe even a minute or two.

Helps calm the nervous system and refreshes your brain.

Maybe also check out the podcast with Rune Abo, a Norwegian health

expert and the episode with John Field from Field of Fitness.

They both share ideas on movement.

For those of us whose work involves lots of screen time.

Experiment five, try out a breathing app.

There are a load of them out there.

They'll play a sound or a tone that guides your breathing while you work.

Now, years ago, I tried out the Vim Hof app, but I got so frustrated

by being sold too constantly.

I deleted it.

I am currently totally obsessed with Lawrence Van Lingen, who's more

my vibe as my teenagers would say.

He has released a free breathing app called Aeri, A-E-R-I, which is a super

simple place to retrain yourself.

I admit it, I've totally fallen down a Lawrence Van Lingen

shaped rabbit hole on YouTube.

He's got me walking backwards, doing his Happy Hips mobility training

every morning, strengthening my feet, flow roping, and trying to

source a tire to pull up hills.

The man is a genius of holistic body movement, you've been warned.

Experiment number six.

Two little reset breathing exercises.

Here's the simplest breathing exercise from Jane's Nester.

Breathe in through your nose for five to six seconds.

Feel your belly expand.

Then your chest.

Nice and gentle.

Now exhale through your nose for the same amount of time.

Repeat for two minutes.

Done.

See how you feel.

And then there's another simple breathing technique called the

physiological sigh, which is so simple.

It goes like this.

Take two short in heels through the nose.

Followed by one long, slow exhale through the mouth.

I play with this a lot during my day and I find it most helpful to do when

someone has just cut me up in the car.

Or when I've accidentally seen a disturbing image on the news or when

I've heard some bad news on email or in real life, I find the physiological

sigh a real pattern disruptor.

And it's great to have in your daily life toolkit.

It just works.

When you do either of these breathing exercises or your own, your body starts to

remember how to breathe naturally, even.

When we're knee deep in spreadsheets or slack messages.

Screen apnea and email apnea are a real problem in lives where we spend

so much time looking at screens.

I'm even doing it now, but with just a little awareness and a few

simple tools, we can breathe better, we can feel better, and maybe even

make better decisions while we work.

Try a few of these little experiments this week, see what difference they make.

I hope you fall down a breathing improvement rabbit hole because it's

so foundational, but so many of us miss out on the benefits that could

form a solid base for a long and enjoyable life at work and beyond,

and you absolutely deserve that.