Breakdown of Vähennän stressiä hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi.
Questions & Answers about Vähennän stressiä hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi.
Vähennän is the present tense, indicative mood, 1st person singular form of vähentää (“to reduce”).
- Infinitive: vähentää
- Stem: vähennä-
- 1st person singular ending: -n → vähennän = “I reduce”
Finnish normally drops subject pronouns (minä, “I”) because the person and number are clear from the verb ending.
- Vähennän stressiä = “I reduce stress.”
- Minä vähennän stressiä is also correct, but it adds emphasis, like “I reduce stress (as opposed to someone else).”
Stressiä is in the partitive case. Finnish uses the partitive object for:
- An incomplete or partial action
- An indefinite amount of something
- Many abstract nouns with verbs like “increase” and “decrease”
Here, you are not eliminating all stress; you are reducing an unspecified amount of it. So:
- Vähennän stressiä. ≈ “I reduce (some) stress.” (natural)
- Vähennän stressin. would suggest reducing a specific, whole chunk of stress completely. This is grammatically possible but sounds odd or very specific in normal speech.
Verbs like lisätä (“to increase”) and vähentää (“to reduce”) very often take the partitive with abstract objects:
- Lisään liikuntaa. – “I increase (the amount of) exercise.”
- Vähennän kahvinjuontia. – “I reduce coffee drinking.”
Hengittämällä is a non-finite verb form meaning “by breathing”.
Grammatically, it is:
- the 3rd infinitive of hengittää
- in the adessive case (ending -lla/-llä)
Formation:
- Infinitive: hengittää (“to breathe”)
- 3rd infinitive stem: hengittä
- mä → hengittämä
- Adessive ending: -llä → hengittämällä
Function: it expresses the means or manner:
- Vähennän stressiä hengittämällä syvään…
= “I reduce stress by breathing deeply…”
So hengittämällä ≈ English “by breathing” / “through breathing”.
Finnish cannot use the basic infinitive (hengittää, sulkea) directly in this position. You need a form that connects to the main verb and says how you do it. That role is filled by the -malla/-mällä form.
- Vähennän stressiä hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi.
= “I reduce stress by breathing deeply and by closing my eyes for a moment.”
If you used finite verbs instead, you would need a full clause:
- Vähennän stressiä, kun hengitän syvään ja suljen silmät hetkeksi.
“I reduce stress when I breathe deeply and close my eyes for a moment.”
So -mällä structures express the manner/means (“by doing X”) rather than time (“when I do X”).
Syvään comes from the adjective syvä (“deep”) and is in the illative case (a “into” case).
- syvä – deep
- syvään – literally “into deep (ness)”
Used with hengittää, syvään functions as an adverb, meaning “deeply”:
- hengittää syvään – “to breathe deeply” (literally: “to breathe into deep”)
This is a very common fixed expression:
- Hengitä syvään. – “Breathe deeply.”
So in the sentence, hengittämällä syvään = “by breathing deeply”.
Yes, hengittää syvästi is possible, but there is a nuance:
- syvään (illative of syvä) is the most idiomatic choice with breathing.
- hengittää syvään is what you’ll hear most often for “breathe deeply”.
- syvästi is an adverb formed with -sti, also meaning “deeply”, often used in a metaphorical or emotional sense:
- Olen syvästi pahoillani. – “I’m deeply sorry.”
- Hän on syvästi rakastunut. – “He/She is deeply in love.”
You can say hengittää syvästi, and it will be understood as “breathe deeply”, but hengittää syvään is more set-phrase-like and natural in this physical breathing context.
Hetkeksi comes from hetki (“moment”) and is in the translative case.
- hetki – moment
- hetkeksi – “for (the duration of) a moment”
The translative -ksi often expresses:
- a temporary state or duration:
- kahdeksi tunniksi – “for two hours”
- viikoksi – “for a week”
So sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi = “by closing (my) eyes for a moment”.
You might also see:
- hetkeksi aikaa – literally “for a moment of time”, same meaning, just a bit longer expression.
Silmät is the plural form of silmä (“eye”):
- silmä – eye
- silmät – eyes
Here it is the object of sulkemalla (“by closing”). Because the eyes are closed completely, we have a total object, and in the plural the total object looks like the nominative plural:
- Nominative plural: silmät
- Accusative (total object) plural: also silmät
The sentence does not explicitly say “my”, but in Finnish:
- Possessive pronouns (minun, “my”) and possessive suffixes are often omitted when it’s obvious the body part belongs to the subject.
So:
- Suljen silmät. – “I close (my) eyes.”
- Pesin kädet. – “I washed (my) hands.”
If you really want to mark possession, you can, but it’s less common in simple body-part actions:
- sulkemalla silmäni hetkeksi – “by closing my eyes for a moment” (more explicit, a bit more formal/bookish)
In this sentence, hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi is an adverbial of manner/means. It answers “how / by what means?”:
- Vähennän stressiä – “I reduce stress”
- (Miten?) hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi.
– “(How?) by breathing deeply and by closing my eyes for a moment.”
So it mainly expresses means, not time.
If you wanted to clearly express time (“when”), you’d more likely use a kun-clause:
- Vähennän stressiä, kun hengitän syvään ja suljen silmät hetkeksi.
– “I reduce stress when I breathe deeply and close my eyes for a moment.”
Yes, that word order is perfectly grammatical:
- Vähennän stressiä hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi.
- Hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi vähennän stressiä.
Both mean the same thing.
The difference is in emphasis:
- Original order: starts with vähennän stressiä, so the fact that you reduce stress is foregrounded, and the method comes after.
- Alternative order: starts with hengittämällä syvään ja sulkemalla silmät hetkeksi, so the method is foregrounded: “By breathing deeply and closing my eyes for a moment, I reduce stress.”
Finnish word order is relatively flexible; moving the -mällä phrase mostly changes which part feels highlighted, not the basic meaning.