Chapter 6 — Box Breathing

I did not know, at first, what I was watching. I thought he was struggling — that the panic had him, that I was about to have two crises in one chair.

His chest was rising and falling in enormous, exaggerated movements, a deep rushing pull of air in through the nose, a slow forced push out through the mouth, and he was doing it audibly, deliberately, almost violently.

It took me a moment to see the shape of it. There was a pattern. A count.

In — one, two, three, four. Hold — one, two, three, four. Out — one, two, three, four.

Hold — one, two, three, four. And again. And again, exactly, metronomically, the same four beats to each side of the square.

I learned the name for it later.