06/08/2026
Little Drops of Quiet 🤫 — Drop 8: The Calm Breath
Before we begin — where are you right now?
Look at the scale. Circle your number. Remember it.
You have come a long way.
You have breathed from your belly. You have breathed into your heart. You have hummed, and counted triangles, and traced squares of light, and circled the golden flower through your spine.
Now we give you the simplest gift of all.
The breath you will use for the rest of your life.
In for four. Out for six.
That is it. That is everything.
The longer out-breath is the secret. When the out-breath is longer than the in-breath, the vagus nerve — that great wandering nerve running from brainstem to gut — sends a signal to the heart to slow down. The parasympathetic nervous system wakes up. The body remembers what it feels like to be safe. This is not a technique. It is a biological fact. You were built this way.
You can do this breath anywhere. On the bus. Before a difficult conversation. In the middle of the night when the thoughts won't stop. In the supermarket queue. At the school gate. Waiting for the kettle to boil.
In for four. Out for six. Three times is enough to change the chemistry of your body.
1. The Breath — Sitting
Begin with your good learning posture. Sit comfortably, spine gently upright, feet flat on the floor. Take one ordinary breath to settle.
Now:
• Breathe in through the nose — 1... 2... 3... 4...
• Breathe out slowly through the nose or softly through the mouth — 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6...
That is one breath. Do it three times to begin. Then let the breath find its own rhythm — longer out than in, easy and unhurried.
Notice what happens in the body. The shoulders may drop. The jaw may unclench. The space between the eyebrows may soften.
You are not doing anything. You are simply allowing the body to remember.
2. The Breath — Walking
Now we take the breath outside.
This is Tai Chi walking — sometimes called Zen walking. It has been practised for centuries. It is having a moment right now on the internet, and rightly so, because it works. It is excellent for balance, for posture, for back problems, for the nervous system, and for that super-duper awareness of the energy field around you.
Setting up
Stand with your feet under your hips, toes pointing forwards — as if you are standing on a railway track. Your feet are going to stay on that railway track throughout.
Drop your shoulders. Check your head is on properly. Relax your hands. Relax your knees. Feel almost as if you are floating.
Put two fingers on your stomach, just below your navel. Press very gently. That is your tanden — your centre of balance. Keep your awareness there throughout.
Finding your balance
Shift your weight slowly onto the left foot, keeping the spine upright. Feel the balance move. Then back to centre.
Now shift onto the right foot. Spine upright. And back to centre.
Do this a few times — just left to right, right to left — until you can feel the balance in your body. You can twist slowly to the left and to the right if you like. That is good.
The step
Take the weight onto the right foot. Feel the balance shift over to the right.
Now step with the left foot — heel, middle of the foot, ball of the foot, toe. Feel the weight shifting over to the left as the foot uncurls onto the ground.
Then step with the right foot — heel, middle of the foot, ball of the foot, toe.
Do that twice more. Don't worry about breathing yet. Just begin to feel the balance in your body as you move, shifting from one side to the next.
The hands — floating in water
Now imagine your hands are floating up in water. Feel the softness of your hands as if they are weightless, buoyant.
• Breathe in — let your hands float up, soft hands, rising gently.
• Breathe out — push a balloon down in water. Feel the gentle resistance.
Do that twice more. On the third breath, let your hands float all the way up to the top of the head on the in-breath, and float all the way back down on the out-breath.
Catching the beach ball
Now we add the catch ball movement.
Bring your left hand up flat, at shoulder level. Bring your right hand across the body, palm up, at about navel level. You are holding a beach ball between your hands. I don't know what colour yours is. Mine's got lots of colours.
• Breathe in — shift the weight, step with the right foot, and bring the ball across to the right side. Right hand flat at shoulder level, left hand underneath at belly level.
• Breathe out — step with the left foot, push with the right hand, and catch ball on the left.
Step, push, catch ball. Step, push, catch ball.
You can almost feel the energy touching your palms. Be aware of the palms of your hands.
Putting it all together
Centre down. Feet flat on your railway track. Spine upright. Head perfectly balanced. Knees relaxed. Awareness at the tanden, just below the navel.
Now — catching ball on the left. Step with the right foot. Push. Catch ball on the right. Step with the left foot. Push. Catch ball on the left.
And breathe — in for four steps, out for six steps — letting the breath and the movement find each other naturally.
Don't worry if the ball shrinks or your railway track gets a bit narrow. It's perfectly normal. We don't usually walk around at this speed or with this much attention. It just needs to be practised, one bit at a time.
Your balance will improve. Your posture will improve. Your energy will improve. Your super-duper awareness of the energy field around you.
Good luck.
3. Your Journal
Before you begin today, check in with the wellbeing scale:
👉 Wellbeing Measure — pennymoontherapy.co.uk/wellbeing
Note your number. After the breath, the walking, and the recording, return to your journal and write:
• Did the walking feel different with the breath woven through it?
• Where did you feel the tanden — the centre of balance — most clearly?
• What number are you now?
And one more question, for the end of the series: which breath will you keep? The belly breath? The heartbreath? The hum? The triangle? The square? The golden flower? The calm breath? There is no wrong answer. The one that stays with you is the right one.
4. Relaxation
Sit back down. Let the walking settle. Press play.
🎧 Brain Visualisation — Penny Moon
9 - Brain Visualisation - A Quiet Place
(Transcript below for those who prefer to read, or who are deaf or hard of hearing.)
5. Transcript
For those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who simply prefer to read.
Find yourself somewhere warm and comfortable to sit or lie down. Make sure that you won't be disturbed.
And then begin by paying attention to your breathing. Deepen your breath and breathe out any tension that you might have in your body. Breathe out any negative feelings. Breathe out any negative thoughts. That's good.
And now allow yourself to drift in with your breath, drifting inside yourself. And we're going to explore that most magnificent organ — your brain.
All the pathways of the brain. That enchanted loom upon which the tapestries of your thoughts are woven in colours and lights.
Imagine, if you will, a great forest spread before you. Trees going on to the horizon — all shades of green, different heights, different shapes, different seasons.
The cells of your brain are a little like trees, with branches and roots reaching up, touching, almost touching the branches and roots of the trees close by. And the thoughts — your thoughts — are like electrical sparkles leaping from one branch to the next, one root to the next root, making sparkling patterns through the forest.
And that space between the branches, that space between the roots, sometimes gets blocked and sometimes needs clearing.
And you may have watched squirrels leaping from branch to branch, sometimes missing their hold and tumbling a little way and catching onto another branch further down. Sometimes you might have seen images of great trees in the rainforests and monkeys leaping from one branch to the other — sometimes holding the branches with their hands, with their feet, or their tails, swinging up and down, roundabout, and sometimes still.
And then jumping and playing and swinging again. And then sitting still for a moment before jumping, leaping, swinging about in the tree. And then once again finding a comfortable branch to be absolutely motionless, still.
Watch the monkey jump. And watch the monkey be still.
And as you go deeper into the forest, it might be that you rest for a while under a lovely tree giving you shade and allowing you to drift into a dreamy place.
And it may be that you can drift back to a night when you watched fireworks. Fireworks leaping and exploding into the darkness of the sky — all the colours of the rainbow. Rockets spreading colours of reds and golds and yellows and blue. Pinwheels spinning — just like your thoughts leaping, sparkling, making beautiful colours and patterns across the sky.
And then when the fireworks were finished, watching the stars and the beautiful patterns of the stars twinkling and dancing a million million miles away — like your thoughts sparkling and dancing across the enchanted loom of your mind.
And now being aware — with awe and wonder — at the possibilities and potential of your brain. Your abilities to learn quickly, to enjoy and delight in learning, for that's what the brain does. To make new pathways, create new patterns which can explode across the sky. Thought patterns of all the colours and hues of the rainbow.
For now, allow those images to fade, but keep with you that feeling of wonder about your own brain. That extraordinary curiosity to explore your own potential.
I'm going to count now from five to one, and when I get to one, in your own time, you can take a nice deep breath, bringing back with you all the memories you need of your journey of exploration into your mind.
Five, four, three, two, and one. Nice deep breath. Open your eyes — alert and refreshed from your journey inside.
6. For Those Who Want More
The calm breath — in for four, out for six — is known in clinical research as extended exhalation breathing or resonance frequency breathing. It is one of the most well-evidenced breathing techniques in existence, with studies showing significant reductions in anxiety, improvements in heart rate variability, and activation of the parasympathetic nervous system within minutes of practice.
The Tai Chi walking practice is drawn from the ancient Chinese tradition of qigong — the cultivation of qi, the life force that flows through and around the body. The tanden (or dan tien in Chinese) is the body's energetic centre of gravity, located about three finger-widths below the navel. When awareness is held there during movement, the body naturally finds its balance, the spine straightens, and the nervous system settles. Modern physiotherapy and balance research have confirmed what Tai Chi masters have known for centuries: slow, conscious walking with attention to the centre of gravity dramatically improves balance, reduces falls, and strengthens the proprioceptive system — the body's sense of where it is in space.
And the brain? The enchanted loom? The forest of neurons, the monkey mind, the fireworks, the stars?
Your brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons. Each neuron can form up to 10,000 connections with other neurons. The total number of possible neural connections in a single human brain exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe.
You were not just breathing. You were not just walking. You were tending the most extraordinary garden in existence.
Further reading: The Polyvagal Theory — Stephen Porges. The Brain That Changes Itself — Norman Doidge. The Secret of the Golden Flower — Richard Wilhelm (trans.).
This is the final drop in the Little Drops of Quiet series. But the practice does not end here. It begins here. Next in the series is Little Rivulets of Quiet coming with me on my favourite pilgrimages.
Come back to the breath that stayed with you. Come back to the walk. Come back to the stillness.
A Quiet Place is always here.
Penny Moon is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and founder of A Quiet Place. pennymoontherapy.co.uk
