Pranayama

Bhramari: the humming bee breath

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 202610 sources

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Pranayama

Breaths

3 to 5 a minute

Carbon dioxide

Depends on the practice

How well tested

Weak

Risk

Low

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Bhramari is a slow breath in through the nose and a long, low hum on the way out, often with your thumbs closing your ears. Humming really does push far more nitric oxide out of your sinuses, about 15 times more in one study. The long hum also slows your breathing, and that calms your heart. The trials of bhramari itself are small, so we’d do it for the calm and leave the bigger health claims aside.

The number that made bhramari famous comes from a 2002 study in Stockholm. Ten healthy people hummed, and the air coming out of their noses carried 15 times more nitric oxide than when they breathed out without humming. Nitric oxide widens blood vessels and helps fight germs, so the jump has been used to argue that humming lowers blood pressure and boosts immunity. In May 2020, a New Delhi ear doctor wrote a three-page paper proposing bhramari against COVID-19. It rested on that 15 times number and didn’t test any patients.

The 15 times is real, but it’s the air leaving your nose, and the 2002 study didn’t measure anything in the blood.

What it is and where it comes from

Bhramari is named for the sound of a bee. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a yoga manual from around the 15th century, gives it one verse. It says to breathe in with force while buzzing like a wasp, then let the breath out slowly with the same sound. Advanced yogis, it says, feel bliss from it.

The versions used in studies today are calmer, with a quiet breath in and the hum on the way out. In a 2010 study in Kathmandu, people breathed in for about 5 seconds and hummed “O-U-Mmmma” for about 15. The inside of the nose and throat buzzed a little.

A 2018 review of bhramari studies points out a practical upside, since the sound tells you right away whether you’re doing it right.

How to do it

1. Sit comfortably. Close your lips and breathe through your nose.
2. Close your ears, if you like. Put a thumb over each ear opening. The classic hold also rests your index and middle fingers on your closed eyes and your ring fingers beside your nose. Your hands can stay in your lap instead.
3. Breathe in through your nose for four. Slow and quiet.
4. Hum out for eight. A low, steady “mmm” with your lips closed. You should feel a buzz in your nose and face.
5. Keep going for five minutes, the length of the Kathmandu sessions.

At four in and eight out, you’re breathing five times a minute. Stretch the hum as it gets easy. The Kathmandu group got down to three breaths a minute.

A simple way to picture it

Your sinuses are like a jar with a narrow neck, joined to your nose. Quiet breathing flows past the opening and barely stirs the air inside. Humming makes the air in your nose shake back and forth many times a second. The shaking swaps the air in the jar with the air outside much faster.

What happens in your body

The first effect is the long breath out. Your heart speeds up a little on every breath in and slows on every breath out. A hum twice as long as your breath in gives it more time to slow. Why does a long exhale calm you down? has more.

The second is the nitric oxide. Researchers found in 1995 that the lining of your sinuses makes it all the time, at levels high enough to stop bacteria growing in a lab dish. It probably helps defend the sinuses and helps the tiny hairs that sweep mucus along. Some of it rides into your lungs with every breath through the nose, where it helps a little with taking up oxygen.

In 2024, researchers at the Karolinska Institute and Purdue tested whether humming made people sharper, since nitric oxide affects the brain in animals. Across four experiments it didn’t. Humming during a memory or speed task made people worse at it. Humming before each try didn’t make them faster, and it didn’t change how they reacted to emotional photos.

What the evidence shows

The New Delhi trial is the strongest of these. Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences randomly split the patients and gave the comparison group a slow breathing exercise of its own. After one session, blood pressure fell no more with humming. A 2018 review found six studies of bhramari up to 2016, none of them randomized, and rated their quality very low.

Nobody has run a long trial of bhramari for blood pressure. We couldn’t find a trial of humming for colds or sinus infections either, though the 2002 authors said its effect on the sinuses should be tested.

Who should skip it

Bhramari is about as low risk as breathing practice gets.

• Running out of air before the hum ends. Make the hum softer, or shorten it to six counts.
• Lightheaded. Breathe in less deeply. Breathing more air than you need lowers the carbon dioxide in your blood, and MedlinePlus lists lightheadedness as the result. Why do I feel dizzy after breathing exercises?
• Sore ears. Leave out the thumbs and keep your hands in your lap.
• High blood pressure. Keep taking your medicine.