How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing
Zaccaro and colleagues systematically reviewed slow breathing techniques, defined as fewer than ten breaths per minute, and their psychophysiological effects in healthy subjects, following PRISMA and narrowing 2,461 abstracts to fifteen eligible articles. The starting observation is that the changes seen in most meditative and relaxing practices rest on voluntarily slowing the breath, while the mechanisms connecting breath control to those changes remain under debate. The documented effects run across the autonomic nervous system, where slow breathing increases heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and the central nervous system, where EEG studies show increased alpha and decreased theta power. Reported psychological and behavioural outputs include increased comfort, relaxation, pleasantness, vigour and alertness alongside reduced arousal, anxiety, depression, anger and confusion. The authors propose two candidate mechanisms, one involving voluntary regulation of internal bodily states and the other involving mechanoreceptors in the nasal vault modulating olfactory bulb activity. This vault cites the review for the effects and records the mechanism as unsettled.
Zaccaro and colleagues systematically reviewed slow breathing techniques, defined as fewer than ten breaths per minute, and their psychophysiological effects in healthy subjects, following PRISMA and narrowing 2,461 abstracts to fifteen eligible articles. The starting observation is that the changes seen in most meditative and relaxing practices rest on voluntarily slowing the breath, while the mechanisms connecting breath control to those changes remain under debate. The documented effects run across the autonomic nervous system, where slow breathing increases heart rate variability and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and the central nervous system, where EEG studies show increased alpha and decreased theta power. Reported psychological and behavioural outputs include increased comfort, relaxation, pleasantness, vigour and alertness alongside reduced arousal, anxiety, depression, anger and confusion. The authors propose two candidate mechanisms, one involving voluntary regulation of internal bodily states and the other involving mechanoreceptors in the nasal vault modulating olfactory bulb activity. This vault cites the review for the effects and records the mechanism as unsettled.
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What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Zaccaro, A., Piarulli, A., Laurino, M., Garbella, E., Menicucci, D., Neri, B., & Gemignani, A. (2018). 'How breath-control can change your life: a systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing.' Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 353. Review of slow breathing techniques under ten breaths per minute in healthy subjects; the effects are documented and the mechanisms linking breath control to them remain under debate. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353
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/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353