How to Switch Off Fight or Flight Two Minutes Before the Call

Four minutes before the call, your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, your shoulders are up by your ears and you have read the same line of your notes three times. Learning how to switch off fight or flight starts with knowing which system is running, and your dry mouth is already telling you. Three methods below have been measured in published studies (a breathing drill, cold water and humming), and the fourth is a ten-second spray we carry in a pocket.

What fight or flight mode is

Your autonomic nervous system runs two settings. The sympathetic side is the one people call fight or flight mode. It is built for a threat: the heart speeds up, breathing gets fast and high in the chest, and blood goes to the big muscles. A deadline, an inbox at 8am or a room full of people waiting for you to speak can set it off the same way a real threat would.

The mouth gives it away early. TeachMePhysiology, a medical-school physiology reference, describes sympathetic stimulation as producing "a low-volume, enzyme-rich saliva." That is the thick, cottony mouth before a speech. In a 2017 study of 247 adults at Zanjan Dental School, Gholami and colleagues found severe anxiety in 50% of people who had low saliva flow and a dry mouth, against 4.4% of people with normal flow.

Rest and digest, the other setting

The parasympathetic side is known as rest and digest. Heart rate drops, breathing slows and lengthens, and the gut and the glands get to work. Saliva is one of its clearest signals. "All salivary glands are supplied by cholinergic parasympathetic nerves," Proctor and Carpenter wrote in their 2007 review in Autonomic Neuroscience, and the same paper notes that saliva flow can rise up to tenfold during taste or chewing.

So a wet mouth and a dry mouth sit on opposite sides of the same system. Each tactic below goes in through the body, by way of the breath, the face or the voice.

How to switch off fight or flight with your breath, face and voice

These are the methods with named research behind them.

Cyclic sighing (the physiological sigh, on repeat)

In early 2023, a Stanford team led by Melis Yilmaz Balban and Andrew Huberman published a trial in Cell Reports Medicine. 108 adults did five minutes a day for 28 days of one of three breathing drills or mindfulness meditation. Cyclic sighing produced a bigger rise in positive mood than meditation and a bigger drop in breathing rate, and the mood gains grew the more days people practised. The protocol from the trial registration:

• Sit or lie down and set a timer for five minutes.
• Breathe in slowly through the nose until the lungs feel full.
• Take a second, shorter sip of air through the nose on top of it.
• Let it all out slowly through the mouth, as long as you can.
• Repeat until the timer goes.

The long exhale is the part the researchers emphasised. One or two rounds at a desk take under a minute.

Cold water on the face

Cold on the face sets off the diving reflex. Lundell and colleagues tracked 26 experienced divers in 2 to 4°C water in a 2021 Frontiers in Physiology study. With the body in the water and the face out, the parasympathetic index fell and the sympathetic index rose. Once the face went under, the parasympathetic index rose again, and the authors credited the trigeminal nerve in the face for that first shift. At a sink, the home version is a basin of cold water and a held breath with your face in it for a few seconds.

Humming

Bhramari, the humming breath from yoga, has been put on a Holter monitor. In a 2023 pilot published in Cureus, Trivedi and colleagues recorded heart rate variability in 23 people across humming, exercise, emotional stress and sleep. Humming gave the lowest stress index of the four. Close the mouth, breathe in through the nose and hum on a long, low exhale.

Coffee is the wrong tool for this moment

When people feel flat before a big call, they reach for a second coffee. If you are already wound up, that adds to the racing heart, the tight jaw and the shallow breath you were trying to get rid of. You end up awake and on edge at once.

What most people want before a pitch or a first meeting is the other combination: switched on and settled. Alert, mouth wet, breath low, attention in the room. We wrote about other ways to get that lift in our list of coffee alternatives for energy.

One spray before work or a big call

Dragon Breath is what we carry for the two minutes before. It is chilcuague extract (Heliopsis longipes, a root from Central Mexico) in a 50 ml mouth spray, and it is the fastest change of state we know of that fits in a pocket.

One spray onto the tongue. For a second it tastes earthy and a little peppery. Then a bright electric buzz spreads across the tongue and mouth, and within about ten seconds the mouth floods. The cotton mouth from a minute ago is now wet and tingling. The sensation is loud enough that the thought loop about the call has nowhere to sit. A clean, fresh feeling lingers for a few minutes after, and people come out of it switched on and present, awake without the coffee rattle.

"Oh wow, the saliva flow" was one customer's first reaction on camera. Another, moments after one spray, said "Definitely energized."

The way we use it before work runs as a short stack: a glass of water, phone face down with the priority list open, then one spray. Before a call, it goes in at the two-minute mark, after a round of cyclic sighing if there is time. Start with one spray and go up to five once you know the feeling. A bottle holds 250+ sprays, and the extract stays sealed in Miron violet glass, away from air and light, so the last spray tastes like the first.

The root itself is wild-harvested from growth zones the Mara team selects with the help of local elders, then dual-extracted in organic solutions. There is more on the plant, its history in Mexican ethnobotany and how the extract is made in our full guide to chilcuague.

Dragon Breath – Chilcuague Extract

50 ml mouth spray. Wild-harvested chilcuague root, dual-extracted. 250+ sprays.

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Dragon Breath considerations

If you're pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or allergic to plants in the daisy family, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask

What is fight or flight mode?

It is the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system taking over: faster heart, quick shallow breathing and low saliva flow.

How do you switch out of fight or flight fast?

The three methods with research behind them are cyclic sighing (two inhales through the nose, one long exhale), cold water on the face and humming on a slow exhale. Many people add one spray of Dragon Breath before a call for the buzz and the mouth-watering switch.

What does rest and digest mean?

It is the nickname for the parasympathetic nervous system, the setting where heart rate slows and digestion and saliva flow pick up. Proctor and Carpenter (2007) note that every salivary gland is supplied by parasympathetic nerves.

Is a physiological sigh the same as cyclic sighing?

Cyclic sighing is the physiological sigh repeated for a set time. In the 2023 Stanford trial people did it for five minutes a day.