Fast and activating

Breath of Fire, Kundalini yoga's fast breath

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 202614 sources

Family

Fast and activating

Breaths

120 to 180 a minute

Carbon dioxide

Falls

How well tested

Unknown

Risk

Some

Timer

None, on purpose

Breath of Fire is a fast breath from Kundalini yoga, quick and even, in and out through your nose. The belly pulls in on each out-breath and relaxes on each in-breath, with no pause between them. Its teachers credit it with a long list of benefits, but we couldn’t find a single trial of it as it’s taught. We’d treat it as a short energizing practice, sitting down, and skip it if you’re pregnant, get dizzy or have high blood pressure.

The name gets used for two different breaths. In Kundalini yoga, Breath of Fire is quick and even both ways. In the research papers that use the name, like a 2004 case report in the journal Chest and a 2022 review of yoga breathing studies, “breath of fire” means kapalabhati, the sharp out-breath with a passive in-breath. A paper about “breath of fire” may well be about a different breath.

The claims are the other muddle. 3HO, the organization Yogi Bhajan founded to teach Kundalini yoga, says Breath of Fire cleanses the blood, strengthens the nervous system, boosts immunity, helps break addictions and expands the aura. These are teachings passed down with the practice, and we couldn’t find a study testing any of them.

What it is and where it comes from

Breath of Fire comes from Kundalini yoga, which its organizations, 3HO and the Kundalini Research Institute, teach as “Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan”. Bhajan left India for Toronto in September 1968 and moved to Los Angeles that December, where 3HO’s history began. He died in 2004, and in 2020 an independent investigation commissioned by his community’s umbrella organization found it more likely than not that he had sexually abused followers.

3HO puts the pace at about two to three breaths a second, 120 to 180 a minute, and says it can be practiced on its own for anywhere from 1 to 31 minutes. It also says Breath of Fire isn’t bellows breath, which is bhastrika.

How to do it

These steps follow 3HO’s description, with the safety rules added.

1. Sit on the floor or a chair with your back straight. Never in water, in the bath or in a car.
2. Close your mouth and breathe through your nose.
3. Push each breath out from the navel. Pull your navel and the area just under your ribs back toward your spine, and the air leaves through your nose.
4. Let each breath in happen. Relax the upper belly, the diaphragm drops, and the air comes in.
5. Keep the in and out equal, with no pause. 3HO says it can run from 1 to 31 minutes. Start at the short end.

3HO says that if you feel lightheaded, dizzy or sick to your stomach, you should stop and breathe slowly.

A simple way to picture it

It’s like a sewing machine needle, short, quick strokes going up and down at the same speed. Kapalabhati is closer to squeezing a plastic bottle and letting it spring back, with all the effort on the squeeze.

What happens in your body

Nobody has measured Breath of Fire itself, so the closest data comes from kapalabhati. In a 2015 study, 47 young men did kapalabhati at about one stroke a second for 15 minutes. Their oxygen use rose by about 35 percent and their estimated carbon dioxide fell by about a quarter, and both went back to normal afterward. In a 2021 study of 20 healthy adults, one-minute rounds of kapalabhati took heart rate from about 84 to about 107 and raised the top blood pressure number by about 9 points.

Whether Breath of Fire drops carbon dioxide depends on how much air each breath moves, and that hasn’t been measured. 3HO says it isn’t hyperventilation. It also says beginners sometimes feel tingling or lightheadedness, and MedlinePlus lists both as symptoms of breathing off too much carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide and what happens in a fast breathing session have the long version.

What the evidence shows

We couldn’t find a single published trial of Breath of Fire as Kundalini yoga teaches it.

The biggest trial of Kundalini yoga is a 2021 study in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers at two US academic centers split 226 adults with generalized anxiety disorder into three groups for 12 weekly two-hour group sessions, plus 20 minutes of homework a day. After 12 weeks, 54 percent of the Kundalini yoga group had improved a lot, against 33 percent with stress education and 71 percent with cognitive behavioral therapy. Yoga beat stress education but didn’t match therapy.

That trial can’t tell you much about Breath of Fire. The breathing practices named in its published plan were sitali breath, alternate nostril breathing, Pauri Kriya and a slow, segmented breath, and Breath of Fire isn’t on the list.

Who should skip it

• Sitting only, never in or near water and never driving, since fast breathing can make you lightheaded.
• Skip it if you’re pregnant, and on the first or second day of your period, depending on how heavy it is. Both are on 3HO’s own list.
• Skip it if you’re dizzy, panicky or have high blood pressure that isn’t under control, or while you’re recovering from surgery or a serious illness, also from 3HO’s list. If fast breathing tends to set off panic for you, can breathing exercises make anxiety worse? explains why.
• Skip it with heart disease, since fast yoga breathing pushes heart rate and blood pressure up while you do it.
• Skip it with epilepsy. Breathing hard on purpose sets off seizures in 87 to 100 percent of children with a common form of childhood epilepsy.