Practices
Breathwork
Meditative Practices
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Origin 300 BCE to 1970 CE
Deliberate regulation of the breath as a spiritual and physiological discipline. Yogic pranayama is the developed system: nadi shodhana alternating the nostrils, ujjayi with a constricted throat, kumbhaka retaining the breath, classically taught after posture and before concentration, and traditionally taught in person because the texts warn that it goes wrong. Daoist and Buddhist practice more often uses the breath as an object of attention than as something to be forced, and anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing, watches the breath without altering it. Sufi and Orthodox Christian prayer both coordinate a formula with the breathing. The modern therapeutic forms have a different ambition: holotropic and rebirthing techniques use prolonged rapid breathing to induce altered states, and the physiological effect they depend on, hyperventilation, is well understood and is not subtle.
Facts
Practice
Category of Practice Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 1 Solitary or CommunalPerformed alone or together 1 Mode of TransmissionYogic pranayama is traditionally taught in person rather than from texts alone, since the classical texts themselves warn that the advanced forms go wrong without a teacher's guidance. 1 Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodTherapeutic breathwork is a later twentieth-century Western development 1 Place of OriginGlobal (Cross-Cultural) 1 Attributions
TraditionDeveloped within Hindu yogic pranayama, Buddhist and Daoist meditation, and Sufi and Orthodox Christian prayer, each coordinating the breath toward a distinct spiritual aim. 1 Status
Current StatusContinues today both within its originating religious traditions and in modern secular and therapeutic forms such as holotropic breathwork. 2 Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThe modern therapeutic forms of breathwork, holotropic and rebirthing techniques among them, induce altered states through prolonged rapid breathing, and the physiological mechanism they depend on, hyperventilation, is well understood rather than mysterious. 2 Learn More
The Breath as a Lever on the Mind
Breathwork is the deliberate regulation of the breath as a means of altering the body, the emotions and states of consciousness. The observation that breath and mind are linked, that agitation quickens the breath and that slowing the breath calms the mind, is ancient and cross-cultural, and it underlies a great family of practices in which conscious control of breathing is used to steady attention, arouse energy, or induce non-ordinary states. The term "breathwork" is a modern, largely secular umbrella covering both these traditional techniques and a range of therapeutic and self-development methods developed in the twentieth century.
The practices divide broadly by aim and method. Slow, regulated breathing calms the nervous system and gathers the mind, and is used to prepare for meditation and to manage anxiety. Fast, deep or forceful breathing, by contrast, can drive the body into intense states, altering blood chemistry, producing tingling, emotional release and sometimes visionary experience, and is used in traditions and modern methods that seek catharsis or ecstatic transformation.
From Pranayama to the Modern Therapies
The most fully developed traditional systems of breath control are the pranayama of Indian yoga and the breathing disciplines of Daoist and Buddhist practice. Yogic pranayama regulates the breath to control prana, the vital energy, as a limb of the eightfold path set out in the classical Yoga Sutras, using retention and alternate-nostril and other techniques to purify the channels and prepare the mind for meditation; the traditions insist these be learned from a teacher and warn of harm from forceful practice done wrongly. Similar breath-centred disciplines belong to Daoist internal cultivation and to Tibetan and other Buddhist yogas.
In the modern West these older techniques have been drawn on, adapted and detached from their frameworks to produce a range of secular breathwork methods, among them the intense, sustained accelerated breathing developed in the later twentieth century for psychotherapeutic catharsis, and various systems marketed for stress, performance and wellbeing. As with meditation and yoga, this migration lifts the techniques out of the cosmological and ethical settings that traditionally governed their use, and practitioners and researchers note both the genuine physiological effects of controlled breathing and the risks of powerful methods practised without the safeguards the old traditions built around them.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing, watches the breath without altering it.
Orthodox Christian prayer coordinates a formula with the breathing.
Yogic pranayama is the developed system.
Sufi prayer coordinates a formula with the breathing.
Daoist practice more often uses the breath as an object of attention than as something to be forced.
Derived From
Modern breathwork descends from the pranayama of the hatha yoga texts by way of twentieth-century adaptation.
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.) Sources
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