EasyBreezyMind
New research on stress, explained plainly
One open-access study at a time: what the researchers did, who took part, what they found and what it doesn’t prove. Every paper is free to read and published under a Creative Commons licence.
Myth check: does music help you recover from stress?
A meta-analysis of 14 experiments found no significant overall effect of music on stress recovery in healthy people — though results varied a lot.
Read →Myth check: does cutting social media to 10 minutes a day improve wellbeing?
In a randomized trial with students, strict limits on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat didn’t change wellbeing or grades — people just messaged more.
Read →Parks and forests helped people recover from stress — and smell mattered most
In a multisensory virtual experiment with 154 people, park and forest settings sped stress recovery while an urban scene did not.
Read →The “nature pill”: 20–30 minutes outdoors lowered cortisol in daily life
City dwellers who spent time somewhere that felt like nature saw stress hormones fall faster — with the best return between 20 and 30 minutes.
Read →Muscle relaxation, deep breathing or guided imagery: which relaxes you most?
A randomized head-to-head study found all three techniques increased relaxation compared with a control group — but they affected the body differently.
Read →Just one session of slow breathing reduced anxiety in younger and older adults
A single session of deep, slow breathing reduced state anxiety and increased a vagal-tone marker — with a larger physiological effect in older adults.
Read →Eight weeks of diaphragmatic breathing: effects on attention, mood and cortisol
In a randomized study of 40 healthy adults, 20 sessions of slow belly breathing improved sustained attention and lowered negative affect and cortisol.
Read →Does breathwork really lower stress? A meta-analysis of 12 trials
A 2023 meta-analysis of randomized trials found breathwork lowered self-reported stress, anxiety and low mood — with an important caveat about study quality.
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