At our latest Wellness Connection session, Dr. Alejandro Chaoul was clear about one thing from the start: meditation and Tibetan yoga are what he personally teaches, but not the only things that work. Prayer, exercise, swimming, and biking all count if they genuinely reset you. What matters is having a stress management practice at all, and using it before burnout sets in rather than after. Here’s what he walked the group through.
Breathe Through Your Nose, and Breathe Low
Breathing is directly tied to the nervous system, which is why nearly every tradition, from pranayama to Tai Chi to Qigong, treats breath as central to mindfulness at work. Nose breathing during the day supports nose breathing at night, which means less waking and better sleep. He pointed to James Nestor’s book
Breath for readers who want the research behind it.
Most people breathe shallow, and faster still under stress. This deep breathing exercise for stress relief is simple: hand on the abdomen, breathe low enough that the belly expands, then exhale back out through the nose.
Take One Honest Minute
Not the smartwatch prompt most of us dismiss. A full minute, roughly eight or nine breaths, with no phone and nothing else. We can self-regulate our breath, and by regulating our breath, we regulate our reaction. This kind of mindful breathing is one of the simplest breathing exercises for stress available during a workday.
Try the STOP Technique for Stress
Jon Kabat-Zinn’s four-step STOP mindfulness technique was Dr. Chaoul’s favorite for its simplicity.
- Stop whatever you’re doing. No emails, no texts, no conversation.
- Take a deep breath, hand on the abdomen.
- Open and observe how you feel, and stay until you’re ready.
- Proceed.
Turn Routines You Already Have Into Resets
Three examples he offered: use hand sanitizer as a brief meditation, breathing through the twenty seconds and visualizing clearing the mind along with the hands. Take a short movement break at your desk, exhaling and folding down, inhaling and rising, exhaling and letting go. Or simply take a shower without planning the rest of the day, letting the water clear you internally as well as externally.
Set Digital Boundaries You Can Keep
If you reach for your phone, open something supportive first, like a meditation or calming-music app, rather than email or news. Keep the phone out of the bedroom where possible. Dr. Chaoul described charging his in the bathroom, doing a short breathing practice, and starting the morning with meditation before picking up the phone.
He also had a note for managers on how to prevent workplace burnout on their teams. Avoid texting employees after hours unless truly urgent, since seeing a manager’s name arrive can bring the stress with it. Scheduling an email to send at the start of a shift solves the same problem.
From the Q&A
On someone who is constantly negative. Don’t feel obligated to automatically engage. It’s reasonable to step away or say plainly, “I don’t have the bandwidth right now, can we find another time?” Framing it around your own capacity, rather than the other person, is what Dr. Chaoul called “the power of a positive no.” Saying no to one thing is saying yes to another.
On which breathing technique for anxiety and stress to use, and when. For calming, extend the exhale, inhaling for four and exhaling for six, working toward eight. A 4:8 ratio also helps at 3 a.m. when the mind won’t settle. For energy, box breathing, inhale four, hold four, exhale four, hold four, is a technique reportedly used by Navy SEALs.
On supporting someone you love who’s hurting. Ask what they need rather than assuming. Some people need to talk, some need a walk, and some need quiet company. We tend to assume others need what we would need, and that isn’t always true.
MasterWord’s Commitment to Employee Well-Being
These practices are part of Wellness Connection, MasterWord’s ongoing initiative to prevent workplace burnout and support work-life balance in localization. As a Vicarious Trauma-Informed Organization, we build support for translator mental health and interpreter mental health into how we train, deploy, and care for our language professionals every day.
For guided meditations, recordings, and more Wellness Connection resources, visit
MasterWord’s Wellness Connection page.
