What should you do when you wake at 3 a.m. and cannot get back to sleep?
Start the ten-minute five-in, five-out timer above with the sound on low, put the phone face down, and close your eyes. Breathe in through the nose on the rising tone and out on the falling one, with nothing held in between. When the timer ends, stop counting and let the breath go where it wants. If you are still awake twenty minutes later, get up for a while in dim light and come back when you are sleepy.
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The middle-of-the-night waking has its own physics. You surface from a light stage of sleep, notice you are awake, and within a minute the mind has found something to do: the thing you forgot, the thing you said, the hours left until the alarm. Each thought nudges the breathing up, and faster breathing is a signal to stay awake. Within ten minutes you are more alert than you were when you went to bed.
A slow, even breath is one of the few levers that works lying down in the dark with no light and no effort. Six breaths a minute is roughly the rate at which the heart's rhythm and the breath fall into step, which is the one thing about slow breathing that has been measured over and over. The pattern on this page is the plainest version of it: five seconds in, five seconds out, no holds, no counting past five.
How to do it in the dark
The point of every step is to need the screen as little as possible.
- Set it up before you need it. Open this page once in the evening, set the session length to ten minutes and the sound to low in the timer settings, and leave the tab open. At 3 a.m. the only thing you do is press Begin.
- Phone face down, screen dimmed as far as it goes. Light is one of the things keeping you awake. The tone at each phase change is the whole guide; you do not need to see the circle.
- Lie on your back or your side, one hand on your belly. The hand is there so you can feel the breath go low without thinking about it.
- Breathe out first, gently, so the first inhale starts from empty.
- Press Begin and follow the tones. In through the nose for five on the rising tone, out through the nose for five on the falling tone. Keep both small. A big inhale wakes you; a long, thin one does not.
- When a thought arrives, let it ride the exhale out. You will not stop the thoughts. You only need to keep the breath slow while they pass.
- When the timer ends, stop counting. Let the breath go wherever it wants and stay as you are. Most people who fall back asleep do so after the counting stops, not during it.
- If you are still awake twenty minutes later, get up. Sit somewhere dim and dull until you feel sleepy, then go back. Lying awake for an hour teaches the bed to be a place where you lie awake.
Why not 4-7-8 in the middle of the night
The 4-7-8 pattern is the one most people reach for at night, and it is a good wind-down before sleep. It is the wrong tool at 3 a.m. for two reasons. The seven-second hold takes effort and attention, and the night has little of either; a hold done half-asleep tends to become a strain, and a strained hold is exactly the part that makes people light-headed. And a pattern you have to count carefully keeps the counting part of the mind awake, which is the part you are trying to put down.
The five-five pattern asks for almost nothing. There is no hold, the two numbers are the same, and after a minute the tones carry it without you. That is the whole argument for it: at that hour, the simplest thing that is slow is the right thing.
If 4-7-8 is already your habit and it works for you in the night, keep it, and keep the hold gentle. The side effects page covers what to do when it does not.
What else helps, and what does not
Do not check the time. Knowing it is 3:14 gives the mind arithmetic to do. The timer runs for ten minutes and tells you when it is done; that is all the clock you need.
Do not reach for the feed. A phone face up in the dark is a lamp with news on it. The one exception is the timer, and only with the screen dimmed and face down.
Keep the room cool and dark. Both are boring advice and both are the advice that has evidence behind it.
If it keeps happening, change the evening, not the night. Most of what is known about slow breathing and sleep comes from doing it before bed, not after waking. The sleep page has the ten-minute wind-down for that, and the one trial that tested paced breathing in people with insomnia used twenty minutes before sleep, not a session in the dark at three.
Before you start
The five-five pattern has no holds and no fast breathing, which is why it is the one for the night. The cautions are the ordinary ones:
- Keep the inhales small. Deep breathing lying down can make some people light-headed; if that happens, breathe normally and let the next inhale be shallower.
- If you have a heart or lung condition, or you are pregnant, check with your doctor before taking up any regular breathing practice.
- Waking at night with chest pain, breathlessness or a pounding heart that does not settle is not a breathing exercise moment. Call your local emergency number.
- Waking and staying awake for a long time, several nights a week, for more than a few weeks, is a reason to see a doctor. Insomnia is treatable, and breathing is not the treatment.
Nothing here treats insomnia, sleep apnoea, anxiety or any condition. It is something to do with ten minutes in the dark.
What the evidence shows
The evidence for breathing in the middle of the night is close to none, because nobody has run that study. The nearest thing is a small trial of paced breathing before sleep. In a 2015 paper in Psychophysiology, Tsai and colleagues took "Fourteen self-reported insomniacs (SRI) and 14 good sleepers (GS)", measured their heart rate variability under paced breathing at 0.1 Hz, which is six breaths a minute, and recorded a night of sleep in the lab. Their result: "Sleep onset latency, number of awakenings, and awakening time during sleep were decreased and sleep efficiency was increased if SRI practiced slow, paced breathing exercises for 20 min before going to sleep."
That is the reason the pattern on this page runs at six breaths a minute, and it is also the limit of what can be said. Fourteen people, one night each, breathing before sleep rather than after a waking, and self-reported insomnia rather than a diagnosis. It supports trying a slow, even breath in the night. It does not show that it will put you back to sleep, and it says nothing about doing it for months. If night waking is a pattern for you, the evening wind-down and a conversation with a doctor are the two things with more behind them.
Common questions
Which breathing exercise is best for falling back asleep?
A slow, even one with no holds, around six breaths a minute: in for five, out for five. It needs no counting past five and no attention to the screen, and the one small trial of paced breathing in people with insomnia used that rate. Patterns with holds, like 4-7-8, ask for more effort than the middle of the night has to give.
Should I look at the phone?
No. Set the timer, turn the sound on low, put the phone face down and close your eyes. The tone at each change is the whole guide. Light from a screen is one of the things that keeps you awake, which is why the sleep page runs the timer at its dimmest.
How long should I breathe for?
Ten minutes, then stop counting and let the breath go where it wants. If you are still awake twenty minutes after that, get up for a while in dim light and come back when you are sleepy. Lying there counting for an hour makes the bed a place where you count, which is the opposite of what you want.
Why not 4-7-8?
The seven-second hold takes effort and attention, and at 3 a.m. both are in short supply; a strained hold is also the part most likely to make you light-headed. 4-7-8 belongs to the wind-down before bed, when you are awake enough to do it gently. In the night, the simpler pattern with no holds is the better tool.
Is waking at 3 a.m. normal?
Brief wakings are a normal part of a night; most people have several and do not remember them. Waking and staying awake for a long time, several nights a week, for more than a few weeks, is a pattern worth taking to a doctor, because insomnia is treatable and breathing is not the treatment.
Does slow breathing cure insomnia?
No. In the one trial that tested it, people with self-reported insomnia who practised twenty minutes of paced breathing before bed fell asleep faster and woke less that night; it was fourteen people, one night each, and the breathing was done before sleep, not during a waking. It is a reasonable thing to try. It is not a treatment.
A note on what this is
Nothing on this page is medical care, and none of it replaces treatment or a conversation with your doctor. Read the medical disclaimer. Night waking that has become a pattern is a reason to see a clinician, not a reason to breathe harder.