Connected breathing

Rebirthing breathwork: the connected breath from a bathtub

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 202610 sources

Family

Connected breathing

Breaths

No pause between breaths, no set rate

Carbon dioxide

Falls, for a long time

How well tested

Weak

Risk

Some

Timer

None, on purpose

Rebirthing, or Rebirthing Breathwork, is breathing in and out with no pause between breaths, for an hour or two, lying down with a trained guide. Leonard Orr developed it in the 1970s, and it belongs to the same family as holotropic and conscious connected breathwork. It lowers carbon dioxide like any long stretch of fast, deep breathing, and almost nobody has studied it by name. We’d try it only with a trained guide, and keep the same safety rules as any fast practice.

The name causes most of the confusion. Orr believed the breathing let people relive their own birth, and the strong feelings and body sensations in a session can make that seem true. The same word also named an attachment therapy that had nothing to do with Orr’s breathing, and in 2000 a 10-year-old girl, Candace Newmaker, died of asphyxiation during one of its sessions in Colorado. Colorado banned that therapy the next year, and state law still forbids mental health professionals from using it.

What it is and where it comes from

Leonard Orr grew up in Walton, New York, a dairy town of about 5,000 people. In his own telling, his first rebirthing experience came in 1962, when he got stuck in his morning bath. He stayed in the tub for two hours before he had enough strength to get out, and he was late for work.

In 1974, he gave a seminar and talked about his birth memories, and most of the people there wanted some too. He told them to get into their bathtubs and stay put until they felt it was time to get out, then stay another 30 minutes to an hour. Most tried it, and many had such strong emotional releases that they wished someone had been with them, so Orr started sitting with people. Next he put them in a hot tub with a snorkel and nose clips. The group grew, and Orr bought a Victorian mansion in San Francisco that came to be known as Theta House.

The breathing came in 1975. After hundreds of hot tub sessions, Orr noticed that people breathed in a particular rhythm, “a connected rhythm in which the inhale was merged with the exhale in one breath.” He tried it out of the water and found it worked better to do about ten one-to-two-hour connected breathing sessions on dry land first. “Dry rebirthing” made it far easier to teach, and Orr went on to run trainings in every US state. He later renamed the practice Rebirthing Breathwork.

How to do it

Rebirthing is taught one to one or in small groups by a breathworker, and Orr said most people learn the rhythm within about ten two-hour sessions. There’s no set pace, and it isn’t something to drill on your own.

1. Lie down. On a mat or a bed, with your guide beside you, somewhere away from water.
2. Connect the breath. Breathe in and out with no pause at the top or the bottom. In a 2025 German study, facilitators of this style told people to breathe “a little bit deeper and more intensely than usual into the belly” and to “connect your breaths into a circle.”
3. Keep going. A session runs about an hour to two hours. The German conscious connected sessions lasted about an hour and a half.
4. Let it settle. Orr stayed with each person until they felt peace. Breathe normally for a few minutes before you stand up.

Stop and breathe normally if you get chest pain, a racing heartbeat, or cramping that worries you, and tell your guide.

A simple way to picture it

Think of the carbon dioxide in your blood as water in a bath with the tap running. Normal breathing drains it about as fast as the tap fills it, so the level holds steady. Connected breathing opens the drain wider, and the level keeps dropping for as long as you keep it up.

What happens in your body

Deep breaths with no pauses blow off carbon dioxide faster than your cells make it. In the 2025 German study, people doing conscious connected breathing dropped about as far as holotropic breathers did, to around 20 mmHg in their breath against about 37 for people breathing normally. In Poland, doctors took blood samples from 48 breast cancer patients 30 minutes into their tenth 45-minute session of connected breathing through the nose. Their blood had turned more alkaline, with less carbon dioxide and less oxygen, which the doctors called mild respiratory alkalosis. Cortisol fell and prolactin rose.

Low carbon dioxide is what brings the tingling, the spasms in the hands and the dizzy, light feeling, all symptoms MedlinePlus lists for hyperventilation. What happens in a fast breathing session covers each one, and carbon dioxide has the chemistry.

What the evidence shows

We couldn’t find a single trial of Rebirthing Breathwork by that name. The closest thing in the medical literature from its early years is a 1984 paper in the Journal of Religion and Health, in which a writer described a rebirthing workshop she’d attended and warned of possible psychological and physical harm.

The same style of breathing has a few recent studies under the name conscious connected breathing. In Turkey, 38 mothers of children being treated for cancer were split into two groups. Half got sleep hygiene advice, and half got the same advice plus three weekly 45-minute connected breathing sessions. Sleep and anxiety improved more in the breathing group, but it was a small pilot trial, and the authors say the results are preliminary.

The German study above found that lower carbon dioxide went with deeper altered states, and deeper states with better wellbeing a week later, in 61 experienced breathers. The Polish study measured blood chemistry in one session and had no comparison group. A 2023 review of fast, deep breathing practices called for rigorous clinical testing of their possible uses as therapy.

Who should skip it

Lie down for the whole session, never do it in or near water, and never drive until you feel normal again. The German researchers screened out people with a history of psychosis, personality disorders, recent substance use disorder, heart disease such as poorly treated high blood pressure or an irregular heartbeat, asthma or other chronic lung disease, epilepsy or another chronic brain condition, and pregnancy. We’d skip it if any of those apply to you, and if you take medicine for blood pressure.