Six Hours of Meetings: The Two Minutes Between Them

A day of consecutive video calls produces a particular kind of tiredness that is out of proportion to what you actually did. Two things combine: the body held still in one position for hours, and attention held continuously with no genuine gaps.

The realistic intervention is not a lunchtime practice you will not get to. It is two minutes between meetings, done properly.

Why video calls specifically

Being on camera adds something. You are watching yourself, aware of being watched, and holding a slightly performed stillness. People sit more rigidly on video than they do in a room, and they move less.

The gaze distance never changes either. In a meeting room your eyes move around, refocus, look out of a window. On a call they hold a fixed distance for hours, which is a real contributor to eye strain and headache.

And the transitions vanish. Walking between meeting rooms was doing something, movement, a change of scene, a pause. A calendar of back-to-back calls removes all of it.

The two-minute sequence

This is designed to fit the gap that actually exists, standing beside your desk.

Stand up and look far away. Out of a window if there is one, at the furthest point in the room if not. Twenty seconds. This alone addresses a real part of the headache.

Roll the shoulders back and down, three times. Slowly. Then hands behind the head, elbows wide, and breathe into the upper ribs for three breaths.

Rotate. Feet planted, turn the upper body one way and then the other, four or five times each. Let the head follow.

Extend. Hands on the lower back, gently lean back, open the front of the hips and chest. Three breaths.

Walk. Even ten steps. To the kitchen and back if there is time.

Three long exhalations. Breathe out for about twice as long as you breathe in. This is the piece that addresses the attention side rather than the body, and it is the one people skip because it feels like nothing.

Two minutes. Between every second or third meeting rather than every one, if that is all that is available.

The part that is not physical

Sustained attention with no gaps is genuinely depleting, and there is no posture fix for it. The exhalation work matters here because a longer out-breath shifts the balance of the nervous system toward settling, and doing that deliberately three or four times a day is meaningfully different from never doing it.

It is also worth defending one actual gap in the day. A calendar with no space in it is a scheduling problem before it is a wellbeing one, and no amount of breathing practice resolves a diary that is genuinely overfull.

At the end of the day

Ten to fifteen minutes. Hip flexor length, upper back extension over a rolled towel, thoracic rotation lying on your side, and a few minutes lying down. The same list as any desk-bound day, because it is the same problem.

Where a teacher helps

The two-minute sequence needs no supervision. What a session adds is the end-of-day work done correctly (particularly hip flexor length, which almost everyone performs in a way that loads the lower back instead of the hip), and having a fixed time in the diary that is not another meeting.

Sessions are live on video, thirty or sixty minutes, which for once is a video call that is doing you good.

Questions people ask

Why am I so tired after a day of meetings when I did not move?

Sustained stillness and sustained attention are both genuinely fatiguing, and neither is proportional to physical effort. Video adds a performed stillness and a fixed gaze distance on top, which is why call-heavy days feel worse than in-person ones.

Is two minutes between meetings actually enough?

For interrupting the position, yes. The problem is unbroken stillness, so the interruption matters more than its length. It does not replace a proper session, but done four or five times a day it changes how the evening feels.

What helps with headaches from video calls?

Looking at something far away for twenty seconds, several times a day, addresses the fixed gaze distance that contributes to it. Shoulder and upper back movement helps the other common contributor, which is sustained neck and shoulder tension.

Why do long exhalations help?

Breathing out for longer than you breathe in shifts the balance of the autonomic nervous system toward settling. It is a small effect each time, and doing it deliberately a few times a day is noticeably different from never doing it at all.