Many times a meditation studio in 7breaths, Central London, simply gather for breathing. The studio provides yoga and meditation session but his signature focuses on “breath”. Those who cross the small cushion in the hot, minimum space, they gently guide them first to focus their breath and then slowly to stay inhales, exhales and between. Target: To D-Stress.
1 or the second century BC talks about a Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, “Pranayama” from BC – after a few centuries, the yoga practice of controlling breath – and yoga texts have described its benefits to stabilize the mind. For the modern breath-to-world people who say that the directed breath helps them make them feel better, it undoubtedly does. But to test whether to reduce stress such as such practice, yet-disgrace, you need random-controlled tests (RCT).
A meta-analysis published in scientific reports in 2023 compiled 12 RCT results, including 785 participants, to examine the effect of slow-breathing on stress. Studies used in-tradition coaching, online classrooms and self-directed breathing mixtures. Participants participating in breathing sessions reported more stress than those in the control group. The effect was small, but was important, roughly to suit the benefits from online cognitive behavior therapy.
However, these conclusions come with the cavets. For example, several studies were demanding help for stress to the participants recruited and compared a subgroup who participated in breathing classes with others, who remained in the waiting list for care. This is a problem, as a “nosebo effect” can become a “nosebo effect” waiting for mental-health treatment, where welfare deteriorates. Comparing people receiving treatment with a deteriorating control group can intervene to compare people they are actually.
In 2023, researchers at Stanford University published a study in SAIL Report Medicine. Participants either mindfulness, “cyclic sighs” (two short inhales, leaving a long breath), “box-breathing” (inhale, pose, exhale, poses), or “cyclic hypervantylum” (30 short inhales and exhales for 15 seconds, for a 15 seconds, for a month, all got a bust for a month. Those who were breathing only said that their mood continued to improve as the study proceeded.
How can breathing control mood be? One idea is that it removes attention from negative or stressful thoughts. Researchers have also found that voluntary breathing can increase heart-rate variability-time fluctuations between the heartbeat. It is often less in people with psychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar and ADHD. Increasing it, the principle goes, so there should be a good thing. There is also evidence that slow breathing and stress regulation can share brain circuits, at least in rodents. A study published in Nature Neuroscience in November 2024 found that stimulating a passage that causes slow breathing in mice, also suppressed anxious behavior.
Evidence on Breathwork can still not be clear, but there is no real downside in practice. Everything from intestine health to infection is now understood to affect mental health. Slow, controlled breathing may soon be added to the list.
Improvement (20 January 2025): An older version of this article states that the best result in cell report medicine studies came from cyclic hypervantitation. In fact it was filling cyclic sighs. This has now been corrected.
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© 2025, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. The original material can be found on www.economist.com
