How to calm down quickly: five minutes, starting with your body.

Five minutes to go. Next door is the client who wants to reopen the contract, or the business partner you owe a long-overdue conversation. You know the numbers by heart. Yet your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow and your teeth are clenched.

You tell yourself to calm down and nothing changes. I see it often in the people I work with: they reread their notes and leave the body as it is. Telling a tense body to relax is pointless. Your brain hears the words say one thing and the body another, and your mood doesn't budge.

Signs you're wound up

• Your breathing climbs. Short, jerky, high in your chest. Sometimes you hold it.
• Your heart speeds up. You feel it in your throat, and your face gets hot.
• You clench. Teeth together, shoulders up by your ears, tongue against your teeth.
• You can't keep still. Your leg jiggles under the table, you fiddle with your pen.

Why your head isn't in charge

Your brain has an alarm that's faster than the part that reasons. It can't tell a real danger from a perceived one: a difficult client counts as a predator. It goes off, and within seconds adrenaline is in your blood. Heart rate up, breathing up, blood sugar up, muscles tight.

Your body is ready to run, and you sit down. That energy was meant for running or fighting. Instead you sit there, composed. What you don't burn off stays put: in your jaw, your neck, that churning inside.

A bit of tension is useful. When it's short-lived, it sharpens attention, memory and performance. Athletes feel it before a race. Come down a notch or two, and stay alert.

Five minutes: burn it off, then slow down

Two minutes: shake it out. In the toilets or an empty room. On your feet, knees soft, small bounces. Let the movement travel up through your hips, shoulders and arms, like a dog coming out of the water. Don't hold your breath. It's the action your body was waiting for. Then stand still for half a minute and notice what's changed: skip that pause and you lose half the effect. Nowhere to do it? Take the stairs briskly.

Half a minute: let your jaw go. Clenched teeth keep the alarm on. Press your tongue hard against the roof of your mouth for three seconds, then let it drop. Six times. Your mouth stays closed, so you can repeat it mid-meeting.

One to two minutes: the long out-breath. Two breaths in through your nose, the second short, then a long breath out through your mouth. One to three times takes the edge off at once. If you're very wound up, count: four seconds for the first in-breath, belly before chest, one for the second, eight out. Five to ten rounds. At rest you take about fifteen breaths a minute; this brings you down to four or five. As the out-breath lengthens your heart rate slows, and your brain hears the threat has passed.

At the door: name what you feel. Say it to yourself: 'This is fear of losing the client.' It sounds like nothing, but naming an emotion turns the alarm down.

Try it today, at a quiet moment. What your body already knows is there when you have five minutes to go and a lot at stake.