Does breathwork raise my HRV?
While you’re doing it, a lot. Slow breathing makes your heart rate swing up and down with each breath, and HRV jumps. Your morning HRV, the number your ring or watch shows you, probably won’t move. In two trials, a month of daily practice didn’t raise it.
The apps show you a big HRV number at the end of a session, so it’s natural to expect your overnight HRV to climb if you keep it up. Those are two different measurements. One is your heart following your breath in real time. The other is your heart at rest in your sleep, and breathing practice hasn’t been shown to change it much.
What we’d do
Do breathwork for how it makes you feel, and judge it by your mood after four weeks. Enjoy the big HRV number during a session, but don’t expect it to carry over to your morning score. If your goal is a higher resting HRV, the things that move it are sleep, alcohol, fitness and illness, covered on hrv.guide.
During the session
Your heart speeds up a little on every breath in and slows on every breath out. At about six breaths a minute, that swing lines up with your blood pressure reflex and gets much bigger. A 2020 review of the method says the gap between a person’s fastest and slowest heartbeat in each breath grows 4 to 10 times bigger than at rest.
Any HRV measure taken during slow breathing will be high as a result. In a 2025 lab study of 84 students, six breaths a minute raised HRV more than square breathing or 4-7-8 did. That’s the number the apps show you.
It’s like measuring how far a swing moves while someone is pushing it. The swing moves a lot, but that tells you nothing about how it hangs when everyone has gone home.
The next morning
| Study | What they did | Resting or daily HRV |
|---|---|---|
| 108 adults, Stanford, 2023 | 5 minutes a day of breathing patterns or meditation, 28 days | No change in any group |
| 88 stressed adults, Poland, 2026 | 20 minutes a day of slow breathing, four weeks | No change, even though stress and anxiety fell |
| 90 people wearing Garmin watches, 2026 | Meditators logged their sessions for three weeks | Up about 4.7 ms during sessions and for at least 30 minutes after. Meditators’ everyday HRV was no higher than other people’s |
The best case for a lasting rise
A 2026 pooled analysis of 18 home breathing biofeedback studies, with 1,352 people, found HRV went up by a medium amount.
What we’d say back
The same analysis found no clear effect on stress. The two trials above measured resting HRV before and after a month of practice, and found no change.
What to watch on your ring or watch
Watch the session itself, where HRV should jump, and your mood ratings before and after. Give your morning HRV a month and expect it to stay inside its usual range. Night-to-night swings come from sleep, drinks, hard workouts and getting sick, and hrv.guide covers them in does one low morning mean you’re overtrained. It also answers will breathing exercises raise your HRV in a week.
6 sources
- Shaffer F, Meehan ZM, A practical guide to resonance frequency assessment for heart rate variability biofeedback, Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2020pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Sumińska S, Rynkiewicz A, Szulczewski M, Resonance frequency versus fixed 0.1 Hz breathing in HRV biofeedback: a four-week randomized comparison, Scientific Reports, 2026nature.com
- Balban MY et al., Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal, Cell Reports Medicine, 2023pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Takezawa J et al., Daily stress and heart rate variability among mindfulness meditation practitioners: mHealth observational study, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2026pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Vann-Adibe S et al., Efficacy and methodology of remote heart rate variability biofeedback interventions for mental health: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2026doi.org
- Marchant J et al., Comparing the effects of square, 4-7-8, and 6 breaths-per-minute breathing conditions on heart rate variability, CO2 levels, and mood, Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2025pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
