From low battery to full charge

“Collecting light” - Photo captured by me in Athens

Let’s talk about energy in the everyday sense, the “Why am I exhausted at 3 p.m.?” kind of way.

You know what I’m talking about: the brain slows, the body feels heavier, attention drifts everywhere but where you want it, and you can’t keep your eyes open. You start thinking about coffee, sugar, or both and you have a meeting to attend to. 

Around mid-afternoon, your circadian rhythm naturally dips. This rhythm, which is your body’s internal clock, regulates almost every system in your body: hormones, temperature, alertness, and digestion. It follows a roughly 24-hour cycle that rises with the morning light and slows towards the evening.

Cortisol, the hormone that wakes you up, peaks early in the day, helping you feel alert and ready. As daylight fades, cortisol drops while melatonin rises, guiding you toward rest.

When your days are full of screens, stress, constant stimulation, caffeine, and shallow breathing, this delicate rhythm becomes distorted. Cortisol stays elevated, melatonin production is delayed, and you end up in that familiar cycle, wired at night, flat in the morning, and exhausted by afternoon.

The body remains in a subtle fight-or-flight state, even when you’re sitting at your desk.

You might not feel dramatic stress, but you’ll notice it in the small details: the mind doesn’t switch off, the tension, the feeling of being “on” all the time.

Your nervous system is still scanning for danger, and your physiology keeps responding accordingly.

Over time, this chronic state starts to drain your reserves:

• Energy becomes erratic.
  Instead of a natural rise and fall, you swing between wired and exhausted. Mornings are slow until you hit an on button, afternoons are heavy and nights feel too awake.

• Sleep loses depth.
  Elevated cortisol suppresses melatonin, so even if you sleep for eight hours, it’s light, fragmented, and not truly restorative.

• Blood sugar spikes and crashes.
  Cortisol releases glucose into the bloodstream to fuel action, which over time leads to cravings, mood swings, and afternoon slumps.

• Digestion slows.
  When the body thinks it’s in survival mode, it diverts energy away from the gut. Bloating, tension, and sluggish digestion often follow.

• Focus fades.
  Prolonged cortisol can interfere with the brain’s memory and regulation centers, leaving you foggy and irritable.

If this continues long enough, the stress response begins to dull. Instead of feeling alert, you feel flat. You wake up tired, move through the day in low-grade fatigue, and even rest doesn’t quite refill you. This is the road to burnout. You might think you can push through, but eventually the body will say and it will probably happen right when you most want to move forward with your life.

We often think of energy as something that needs an add on to replenish: more caffeine, more sleep, more supplements, more sugar. And while those matter, energy is also about how well the body can regulate and recover. 

The Holistic Equation

Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and movement form the foundations of vitality. Without them, there’s no sustained charge. So how does that relate to breathwork? Well the breath is the switchboard that connects them all, the bridge between effort and rest, between energy production and restoration.

If sleep is when you recharge, nutrition is your raw fuel, and movement is how you circulate that energy, then breathing is what determines how efficiently it’s used at a cellular level.

Breathe poorly, and your cells don’t get the oxygen they need. Improve your breath, and you transform the same input into more usable energy.

How so?

When your breathing becomes fast, shallow, or mouth-based, your body reads it as stress. You are chronically, mildly hyperventilating. Blood vessels constrict, carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels drop, and oxygen delivery to the tissues drops. This is a classic fight-or-flight pattern. In this state, cortisol rises. 

Slowing your breath activates the vagus nerve, which signals safety to the brain. The parasympathetic system takes over, cortisol begins to lower, heart rate steadies, and digestion resumes.

From a biochemical perspective, gentle, slow, low, deep, nasal breathing maintains a healthy level of CO₂. Think of the Bohr Effect, where CO₂ acts as the key that unlocks oxygen from haemoglobin so it can reach your tissue. More CO₂ tolerance means more efficient oxygen delivery and less fatigue.

At the same time, nasal breathing draws nitric oxide into the lungs, dilating airways and blood vessels to improve circulation and oxygen uptake. This is how breath transforms not just how you feel, but how your cells function.

So, do you need to live entirely within the parasympathetic state? No. We need to move between both branches of the nervous system to achieve balance. The goal isn’t to stay relaxed all the time, ideally the goal is to transition easily between activation and recovery.

What breath can I employ to help me? 

Anything with a prolonged exhale is what I suggest and Box Breathing is one of the simplest ways to restore rhythm.

• Inhale through your nose for 4 seconds.

• Hold your breath for 4 seconds.

• Exhale slowly through your nose for 4 seconds.

• Hold again for 4 seconds before the next inhale.

If a count of four feels too long, try three. Practise for three to four minutes and keep the breath light, slow, and deep.

You might feel a slight air hunger by the end. That’s the sign your CO₂ is rising and your body is recalibrating. If it becomes uncomfortable, return to your natural breath and rest.

Practised in the afternoon, it steadies focus without the crash. Practised before bed, it lowers cortisol and heart rate, easing you into deeper sleep.

Building Sustainable Energy

If you want to feel consistently energised, consider how the pieces fit together:

• Sleep
  Your primary recovery system. Nasal breathing and balanced CO₂ during sleep support oxygenation and repair.

• Nutrition
  Stabilise blood sugar to prevent spikes and crashes.

• Movement
  Use it to circulate oxygen and reset your breathing rhythm; include strength, mobility, and cardio.

• Breath
  Choose three times a day to consciously breathe through the nose; slowly, deeply, and with length. Do it consistently, and you’ll train your system to shift naturally between activation and recovery, between doing and being.

Can we go deeper with the breath?

Of course! How about breaking the pattern of being constantly on? Can someone transition from a constant state of doing; thinking ahead, solving problems and managing expectations to productivity that doesn’t feel daunting? When we teach the body to be on all the time, the body learns this pace and forgets how to switch off. Even when you stop working, your mind keeps running.

Conscious connected breathing helps interrupt that cycle. By breathing continuously, without pauses between the inhale and exhale, the body begins to release the accumulated tension that comes from long-term activation. You start to move from control into presence and from operating on effort to experiencing ease.

This is where breathwork becomes more than a stress-management tool. It helps you connect to a deeper sense of vitality that no longer needs adrenaline.

The Consious Connected breath, with the proper guidance, helps your system remember how to function efficiently and, at the same time, how to enjoy being in your own body again.

When performance meets presence, productivity naturally follows because you finally discover and stop resisting your own rhythm.

That’s the real foundation of energy: peace with your pace.

Sustainable energy is steady and available whenever you need it. When your breath slows, your body regulates, the mind clears, and energy rises on its own.

You don’t need more drive; you need to rediscover your rhythm.

And don’t forget to do the things you love, because joy is energy, too.