I was at a meeting, inwardly debating another visit to the snack table, when one of my colleagues suddenly went pale. As the color drained from her face, her hands rose to her throat—soundlessly, she wasn’t choking—and her eyes darted with agitation. In the next second, she bolted from the room.

I followed her out. “I feel like I can’t breathe,” she gasped. She managed to explain that she was having a panic attack. I could see from the resigned look on her face that she thought she’d just have to ride this unpleasant experience out, but I thought she might be game to try something.

“Put one hand here,” I said, showing her by placing my palm on my belly, “and the other here, on your chest.” She followed along. Then I gave her a few simple instructions for a Yoga breathing practice. Within a minute, she was noticeably calmer; a few minutes more, and she was able to breathe normally, panic attack over.

This wasn’t the first time that Deergha Swasam, a.k.a. Yoga’s Three-Part Breath, had come to a friend’s rescue. Years ago, I used it in a hospital room in the spinal cord injury unit at Mt. Sinai. A diving accident left my friend Francesco with two smashed vertebrae and no movement at all below his shoulders. In his waking hours, he suffered from severe anxiety and PTSD; when asleep, he had vivid nightmares that his legs had been cut off.

Breathing is the only involuntary bodily function we can voluntarily alter—you can breathe faster or slower or hold your breath for a time. And just as your emotional state can affect your breathing, the opposite is true as well. Yogis in ancient times knew this, and they used different breathing patterns to get energized and, when necessary, calm the F down.

For Francesco, the Three-Part Breathing practice became a way to reduce stress, a form of meditation, and a path to healing. (When the body is in a heightened state of stress, as his was even long after the accident, healing is inhibited. The sympathetic nervous system’s “fight or flight” response can be adjusted when breathing becomes relaxed.) For the average person, it’s a handy tool that can help reduce the kind of chronic stress that can get us into all kinds of health trouble.

Three-Part Breathing is simple, you can do it anywhere, anytime, and it’s ridiculously expensive—oh, sorry, actually it’s free. Now you can breathe a little easier… Here are the three simple steps to do Deergha Swasam/Three-Part Breathing. Read through the instructions first, then try it out.

1. Start by sitting up tall in your chair, feeling your spine lengthened. (If you’re unable to sit up, as Francesco was, no worries; you can do this exercise while lying down.) If you like, you can place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly to feel the wave of the breath.
2. On your next inhalation, start your breath from the belly, then bring it to your lower ribs, and all the way to your upper chest.
3. Then exhale from your upper chest, relax your lower ribs, and gently pull in your abdomen. Inhale using your belly muscles; expand lower ribs; breath goes to the upper chest. Exhale from upper chest, lower ribs, and abdomen. Repeat for a few rounds, then return to your normal breathing pattern.

If you feel dizzy or lightheaded, you may be breathing too hard. This should be comfortable, like a sigh of relief. Which is probably what it will feel like after a few rounds of doing this breathing Yoga.

Suzan Colón is the author of  Yoga Mind:Beyond the Physical: 30 Days to Enrich Your Practice and Revolutionize Your Life From the Inside Out.