Myth or fact

Breathwork is just a few slow, relaxing breaths

Short answerNot the way you think

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20268 sources

Not the way you think. Slow patterns are a few minutes of calm breathing. Fast sessions are a different animal, closer to a hard workout, with tingling, cramping hands, an adrenaline surge, sometimes crying, and a real chance of fainting. Both get called breathwork, so it helps to know which one you’re signing up for.

Why it seems true

Most people meet breathwork as a few deep breaths at the start of a yoga class or a meditation app. It sounds pleasant and a bit too simple, which is why plenty of people skip it. Gyroscope’s own old guide called this the most common misconception, that breathwork “is simply very relaxed breathing.”

Then some of those people go to a full session and get a shock. The old guide described a full session as “more like a marathon than a brief stroll.” It used the same comparison we would. “Exercise” covers a walk to the shops and a marathon, and nobody expects them to feel the same. Breathwork is just as wide.

What a slow session does

A slow pattern like cyclic sighing or six a minute works the brake on your heart. Each breath out slows your heart a little, and slowing your breathing to around six a minute makes those swings bigger. Carbon dioxide stays close to normal. You end up calmer, a bit heavier, sometimes sleepy.

In the Stanford trial of 108 adults, five minutes a day of cyclic sighing cut anxiety after each session by 3.85 points on a standard anxiety scale, and lifted mood more than meditation over the month.

What a fast session does

A fast session floors the gas. Dozens of big breaths in a row blow off carbon dioxide, and your blood turns more alkaline. Then:

• Your nerves get jumpy. MedlinePlus lists numbness and tingling around the mouth and in the arms, and spasms in the hands and feet, as symptoms of low carbon dioxide. The Wim Hof Method’s own page says you may feel tingling and lightheadedness.
• Your brain gets less blood. Blood vessels in the brain narrow when carbon dioxide drops, and brain blood flow can fall a lot.
• Adrenaline surges. In a 2014 Dutch study of people trained in fast breathing with holds, adrenaline in their blood rose sharply during the practice, and their blood oxygen dipped to around 50 percent for about 10 seconds in each round.
• Emotions can spill over. Gyroscope’s old guide listed crying, frustration, anger, screaming and swings between hot and cold among the things people experience in a full session.

And it can be long. Holotropic breathwork, developed by Christina and Stanislav Grof in 1975, is deep overbreathing to music, and a typical session lasts one to three hours.

What the trials show about each

The Stanford trial included a fast group, doing three rounds of 30 deep breaths and a 15-second hold on empty, five minutes a day. Their mood rose after each session by 1.97 points, the most of any group. Their anxiety fell by 1.81 points, the least of any group, about half the drop with cyclic sighing.

That fits what each one does. Fast breathing is a jolt. It perks people up, the way a hard sprint does. Slow breathing winds them down. A 2023 review of breathing trials found slow breathing lowered stress, and only two fast-breathing trials had looked at stress, too few to show anything either way.

What the old guide got right, and what we’d change

The old guide was right that a full fast session is intense, and right that it takes some preparation. It said not to do it in water or while driving, and to do it sitting or lying down somewhere comfortable. We’d keep every word of that.

What we’d change is the order. The old guide made the long, intense session the ideal and the short ones the add-on. We’d flip it. Five minutes of a slow pattern every day is the practice with the evidence. Fast sessions are an occasional experience for people who’ve checked they’re safe for them.

How to tell what you’re signing up for

• Slow. Counts, a timer, “box,” “4-7-8,” “coherent,” “resonance,” “physiological sigh,” “extended exhale.” Usually a few minutes, sitting or lying down.
• Fast. “Rounds,” “retention,” “holds on empty,” “Wim Hof,” “holotropic,” “connected breathing.” Anything from a few rounds to one to three hours, often lying down, often with music.
• If you’re not sure, ask. A good teacher will tell you what the breathing is and who should skip it. If you’re pregnant or have epilepsy, heart disease or blood pressure you take medicine for, skip the fast kind.