How to Calm Your Nervous System at Work in 90 Seconds

Learning how to calm your nervous system at work is the fastest route back to focus, and it takes about 90 seconds. Workplace stress is not a sign you are working harder. Sitting in fight-or-flight for hours drains your capacity to think, drags your productivity down and pushes you towards burnout. The good news is that nervous system regulation is a trainable skill, and the techniques below come straight from the therapy room.

What happens to your nervous system when work gets stressful

Your amygdala runs your threat response. It cannot tell the difference between a sabre-toothed tiger and a restructure announcement, so it treats both the same way. Cortisol floods your body, adrenaline starts pumping, your breathing goes shallow and your digestion slows. This is your sympathetic nervous system doing exactly what it evolved to do.

The cost shows up in your thinking. When you are in that state, blood flow shifts away from your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for judgement, planning and executive function. You still have those capabilities. You just cannot reach them until your body believes the threat has passed.

Consultant counselling psychologist Dr Ritz Suk Birah holds a degree in neuroscience alongside her clinical training, and she builds her workplace sessions around this exact gap. Before the pandemic she ran a private practice in Canary Wharf, one of only two psychologists doing so, working with high-achieving people in finance and law who were carrying what she calls silent stress. She has since delivered a four-year programme for Lloyds Bank covering stress, perfectionism and the inner critic.

Her point is that most people already know what to do once they are calm. What they are missing is the pause in between.

» Explore: PepTalk's stress management speakers

How to calm your nervous system at work: four techniques

1. Level Up Breathing: the 90-second reset

This is the grounding technique Dr Ritz opens most of her workshops with, and it works in a meeting room or over video. Run it yourself now.

• Bring to mind a situation from the last fortnight where your stress sat at around a six out of ten, with ten being high and zero being low. Pick something that feels safe to revisit.
• Notice what happens to your thoughts. Notice what happens in your body. Notice the emotion, and notice the urge or behaviour that comes with it.
• Take a deep breath in.
• Take another one on top of it.
• Let it out slowly, slower than feels natural.
• Now rate your body again on the same scale.

Most people land at a two. That is a drop of four points in 90 seconds, using nothing but breath. What you have done is move from sympathetic activation into a parasympathetic state, which is what reopens access to your prefrontal cortex. From there the next decision usually becomes obvious, because you already knew what it was.

The reason Dr Ritz teaches the neuroscience alongside the technique is that people keep using it once they understand why it works. She also encourages teams to share the language, so a colleague can say "let's do a level up breath" before a difficult conversation rather than everyone white-knuckling through it separately.

"People often leave saying, why was I not taught this at school?"— Dr Ritz Suk Birah

2. Externalise your thoughts

Your brain is not built to hold a large volume of information at once. Short-term memory handles roughly seven to nine items at a time, and most working days ask for far more than that. That overload creates stress before anything has actually gone wrong.

Get it out of your head and onto paper. Organise your to-do list, use a calendar to schedule when each task will actually happen, and build a system you trust. The relief comes from your brain no longer having to hold everything in suspension.

3. Cultivate calm on purpose

Calm is a capacity you build rather than a mood that arrives. Experiment until you find what genuinely settles you, then practise it when you do not need it. That might be meditation, yoga, breath work, pottery, tai chi, cooking or gardening. Our guide to making sense of meditation and mindfulness is a useful starting point if you are not sure which to try.

4. Take the time out

When overwhelm hits, pushing through is the least efficient option available to you, because your judgement is already compromised. Interrupt it instead. Move your body, walk, talk to someone you trust, or use breathing exercises, EFT tapping or shaking. Time in nature works if you have longer. Our roundup of seven proven ways to reduce stress and anxiety instantly covers more options, and three tips for finding calm is worth a read alongside it.

Once you are calmer, look at the cause. Do you need to ask for help? Does something need writing down? Does a deadline need moving? Naming the actual problem is what stops the same stress cycling back tomorrow.

Workplace wellbeing ideas that change behaviour, not just mood

If you are planning a wellbeing session, a Stress Awareness Month slot or a Mental Health Awareness Week programme, the difference between a nice hour and a lasting one comes down to a few practical choices.

Give people a technique, not just a talk

The feedback Dr Ritz gets most often is that people leave knowing what to do next, rather than simply feeling good for an afternoon. Ask any speaker you are considering what your team will physically be able to do differently on Monday morning. If the answer is vague, the session will be too.

Make it interactive from the start

Her keynotes run closer to workshops. The chat opens every couple of slides, polls go out, and in a room she works from a whiteboard as the audience throws things at her. Virtually, people can message her privately so their question gets answered without their name attached, which tends to surface the things nobody wants to say out loud.

Book the repeat, not just the one-off

Repetition is what moves these techniques into habit. People arrive at a session in different seasons of their own lives and take away whatever they need at the time, so the same content lands differently a year later. Building a returning slot into your calendar does more than adding another new topic.

Start from your problem, not their niche

Dr Ritz describes her approach as a GP's. Rather than leading with a specialism, she asks what the presenting problem is and builds from there, which is why briefs on change, restructures, redundancy conversations, imposter syndrome, boundaries and burnout all land in the same place. If you have a brief and standards to meet, including HSE stress management standards, say so upfront and ask for the session to be shaped around it.

Speakers who can run a nervous system regulation session for your team

Dr Ritz Suk Birah

A consultant counselling psychologist with a neuroscience degree, Dr Ritz brings tools from the therapy room into sessions on stress, emotional regulation, burnout and leading through change. She hosts the podcast The Therapy Floor.

Learn more and book Dr Ritz Suk Birah →

Lauren Vaknine

A holistic health coach whose keynote, Regulate to Perform: The Nervous System Reset, builds a full session around this exact material, moving from stress activation through to practical, usable regulation tools.

Learn more and book Lauren Vaknine →

Jamie Clements

A breathwork specialist and founder of The Breath Space, Jamie works with entrepreneurs, politicians and athletes on the exact mechanism behind Level Up Breathing: using breath to shift out of stress and back into clarity.

Learn more and book Jamie Clements →

Tania Diggory

Founder of Calmer, Tania has delivered award-winning burnout prevention training to over 400 companies globally. The strongest option for organisers building a repeat wellbeing programme rather than a single session.

Learn more and book Tania Diggory →

Tianna Soto

A wellness journalist and former Women's Health magazine editor, Tianna translates mental health research into language teams actually use. Useful when your audience is sceptical of wellbeing content and needs the evidence handled well.

Learn more and book Tianna Soto →

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you calm your nervous system quickly?

Take a deep breath in, take a second breath on top of it, then exhale slowly and for longer than feels natural. The extended exhale is what engages the parasympathetic nervous system. Rating your stress out of ten before and after makes the shift measurable, and most people drop several points inside 90 seconds.

What is nervous system regulation?

Nervous system regulation is the practice of moving yourself out of sympathetic activation, the fight-or-flight state, and back into a parasympathetic state where rest, digestion and clear thinking are possible. Breath, movement, tapping and grounding techniques all work by signalling to the body that the threat has passed.

Why can't I think clearly when I'm stressed at work?

Under stress, your amygdala triggers a threat response and resources shift away from your prefrontal cortex, the region handling judgement, planning and executive function. Your ability has not gone anywhere. You regain access to it once your body has settled, which is why the pause matters more than pushing harder.

What should a workplace stress session include?

At minimum, one technique people can use the same day, an explanation of why it works so they keep using it, and interaction rather than a lecture. Sessions shaped around your actual brief, whether that is restructure, redundancy conversations, burnout or HSE stress management standards, land better than a generic wellbeing hour.

How much does it cost to book a stress management speaker?

PepTalk's in-person sessions start from $2,000, with virtual formats available at a lower rate. Fees vary by speaker, format and length, so tell us the brief and the date and we will come back with options and a quote.

💡 Would you like to give your team a technique they will still be using next year? Get in touch with the PepTalk team and we will scope the right format and a quote for your audience, or browse our stress management speakers. You can also call us on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US). Remember, it's always a good time to get a PepTalk!