Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal
Yilmaz Balban and colleagues ran a remote randomised controlled study comparing three daily five-minute breathwork exercises against an equivalent period of mindfulness meditation over one month. The breathing conditions were cyclic sighing, emphasising prolonged exhalations; box breathing, with equal inhalations, retentions and exhalations; and cyclic hyperventilation with retention, with longer inhalations and shorter exhalations. Primary endpoints were improvement in mood and anxiety alongside reduced physiological arousal, measured as respiratory rate, heart rate and heart rate variability. Using a mixed-effects model, the authors report that breathwork, and exhale-focused cyclic sighing in particular, produced greater improvement in mood and greater reduction in respiratory rate than mindfulness meditation. Their conclusion is stated narrowly: daily five-minute cyclic sighing has promise as an effective stress management exercise. This publication treats the comparison between breathwork and meditation as the design's strongest claim, and the ranking within the three breathwork arms as its weakest.
Yilmaz Balban and colleagues ran a remote randomised controlled study comparing three daily five-minute breathwork exercises against an equivalent period of mindfulness meditation over one month. The breathing conditions were cyclic sighing, emphasising prolonged exhalations; box breathing, with equal inhalations, retentions and exhalations; and cyclic hyperventilation with retention, with longer inhalations and shorter exhalations. Primary endpoints were improvement in mood and anxiety alongside reduced physiological arousal, measured as respiratory rate, heart rate and heart rate variability. Using a mixed-effects model, the authors report that breathwork, and exhale-focused cyclic sighing in particular, produced greater improvement in mood and greater reduction in respiratory rate than mindfulness meditation. Their conclusion is stated narrowly: daily five-minute cyclic sighing has promise as an effective stress management exercise. This publication treats the comparison between breathwork and meditation as the design's strongest claim, and the ranking within the three breathwork arms as its weakest.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Remote randomised controlled study (NCT05304000) of three daily five-minute breathwork exercises against an equivalent period of mindfulness meditation over one month; breathwork, especially exhale-focused cyclic sighing, produced greater improvement in mood and greater reduction in respiratory rate than meditation. doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
Where we use it
- The Breathing Exercise That Beat Meditation, Why We Move
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895