Connected breathing

Sudarshan Kriya: slow, medium and fast breathing

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 202610 sources

Family

Connected breathing

Breaths

2 to 4 a minute up to about 30, by part

Carbon dioxide

Falls, for a long time

How well tested

Moderate

Risk

Some

Timer

None, on purpose

Sudarshan Kriya, or SKY, is a breathing sequence from the Art of Living Foundation. It runs from very slow throat breathing, through fast bellows breaths and chanting, into long cycles of slow, medium and fast breaths. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar created it in 1982, and it’s taught only in courses. It has one of the larger sets of trials in breathwork, mostly small, with good results in depression and PTSD. We’d pick it if you want a taught program, unless you’re on its teachers’ list of people who should skip it.

Most people meet SKY in one of two ways. Either a friend comes back from a weekend course saying it changed their life, or they see Art of Living’s research page, which says SKY is “shown in over 100 independent studies.” Both make it sound settled. The stories are real, but they come from people who chose to go. And the study count lumps together small pilot studies, trials with no comparison group, and a handful of proper randomized trials. Those trials show real results, and most of them are small.

What it is and where it comes from

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who founded the Art of Living Foundation, developed SKY in 1982 during a 10-day silence in Shimoga, India. Sudarshan Kriya is Sanskrit, and a 2013 review translates it as “proper vision by purifying action.” By 2013, the foundation had taught it to more than 6 million people in 152 countries.

The practice has its roots in traditional yoga. Its first parts are ujjayi and bhastrika, two yoga breathing techniques, followed by chanting Om. The Kriya itself is an advanced form of rhythmic, cycling breathing that the foundation teaches in person or live online with a certified instructor.

How it’s done

Art of Living teaches the Kriya in its Part 1 course over three days, with 2.5 hours a day of live sessions. You sit with your eyes closed, and the four parts come in order.

1. Ujjayi, the victorious breath. Very slow breathing, about 2 to 4 breaths a minute, with a slight narrowing at the back of the throat so you feel the air touch it. Each part of the breath is stretched to a set count.
2. Bhastrika, the bellows breath. Fast breaths, rapidly in and forcefully out, at about 30 a minute. People describe excitement followed by calm.
3. Om. Chanted three times, each with a very long breath out.
4. Sudarshan Kriya. Long cycles of slow, medium and fast rhythmic breathing, led by the teacher or a recording, with normal breathing in between. The form Art of Living gives doctors says it includes a fast cycle under a teacher’s guidance and a lying-down phase.

In the trials, people did an intensive start and then a short daily practice. In the 2017 Pennsylvania trial that meant six sessions of 3.5 hours in the first week, then a weekly 1.5-hour group session and 20 to 25 minutes a day at home. The veterans in the 2014 study did seven days, three hours a day. The fast parts carry the same rules as every fast practice, so do them sitting or lying down, never in or near water and never driving.

A simple way to picture it

It’s a bit like a hard run followed by lying on the grass. The fast part revs you up, and the stillness afterward feels deeper because of it.

What happens in your body

Each part pushes your body a different way. Slow ujjayi breathing makes your heart rate rise and fall more with each breath, and the 2013 review links it to a shift toward the calming side of your nervous system, through the vagus nerve. Slow breathing explains how that works.

Bhastrika and the fast cycles do the opposite at first. Indian researchers who tested SKY in 2000 described it as “rhythmic hyperventilation at different rates of breathing.” Fast breathing lowers carbon dioxide, which is why the form for doctors says carbon dioxide dips during the fast cycle, mostly in someone’s first two or three sessions. What happens in a fast breathing session and carbon dioxide cover that side.

Two psychiatrists, Brown and Gerbarg, proposed in 2005 that the mix of slow and fast leaves people calm and alert at once, through a stronger calming drive, quieter stress systems and a release of hormones. They also wrote that the mechanisms hadn’t been worked out.

What the evidence shows

The trials started in India. In 2000, doctors in Bangalore randomly assigned 45 hospital patients with melancholic depression to electroconvulsive therapy, the antidepressant imipramine, or SKY. All three groups improved over four weeks. By the end, 93 percent of the electroconvulsive group were in remission, 73 percent of the imipramine group and 67 percent of the SKY group. The trial wasn’t blinded, and SKY did worse than electroconvulsive therapy, but about as well as the drug.

In 2014, researchers from Stanford and the University of Wisconsin randomly assigned 21 US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to a week of SKY or a waiting list. The SKY group’s PTSD scores, anxiety and breathing rate fell, and the waiting group’s didn’t. The improvement held a year later, though only nine of the SKY veterans answered at that point.

In 2017, at the University of Pennsylvania, 25 people still depressed after at least eight weeks on antidepressants kept taking their medicine and were randomly assigned to SKY or a waiting list for eight weeks. On the main depression scale, the SKY group improved by almost 10 points, and the waiting group got slightly worse. There were no adverse events. It was a pilot study, and the comparison group was a waiting list.

The largest test came out of a VA hospital in Palo Alto in 2022. Researchers randomly assigned 85 veterans with PTSD symptoms to SKY or cognitive processing therapy, a talk therapy the VA recommends as a first-line treatment for PTSD. On PTSD symptoms, SKY was about as good as the therapy at six weeks, one month and one year. On depression and mood, it fell behind by the one-year mark. No adverse events were reported in the SKY group.

A 2026 review of 40 studies in 3,321 veterans rated the evidence that SKY brings meaningful improvement in PTSD as moderate quality, but based on very few studies. Most SKY trials are small, many compare it with a waiting list instead of another treatment, and in the US trials instructors from Art of Living or its partner groups led the sessions. We couldn’t find a large trial comparing SKY with an active treatment for depression.

Who should skip it

Art of Living Foundation Canada gives people a form to take to their doctor. It lists a seizure disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, major surgery in the past eight weeks, and pregnancy as reasons not to learn SKY. The fast cycle lowers carbon dioxide, which lowers the seizure threshold. In theory, fast cyclic breathing could trigger mania in bipolar disorder, or a dissociative or psychotic episode in schizophrenia. Pressure in the belly and chest can strain a fresh surgical wound. For pregnancy, the form says there’s no data either way, and pregnant women have traditionally been discouraged. People with these conditions have often taken the foundation’s Sahaj Samadhi meditation course instead, which the form calls safe and relaxing.

The Pennsylvania trial left out people with bipolar disorder, psychosis, substance abuse, ADHD, pregnancy or epilepsy. We’d also skip the fast parts if you have heart disease or take medicine for blood pressure, as with any fast practice. Never do any part of it in water or while driving.