The Art of Bioenergetic Breathing
A potent tool for personal growth and transformation by breathing quickly and deeply
Breathing is a potent tool for the stimulation of personal growth and transformation. This article discusses the what and the how of a specific breathing therapy called bioenergetic breathing or round breathing. For the why of breathing, you can read this more poetic essay, The Anatomy of Vitality. Having difficulty breathing? If you are having difficulty breathing, please see below for possible causes in Appendix: Difficulty Breathing.
Someone tells you to “take a deep breath.” There’s more to it than you think. It’s the tip of an iceberg most people have never seen or heard of.
For many years, I practiced, taught, and explored an unusual form of therapeutic breathing known as “bioenergetic breathing.” It’s basically just strong deep breathing — a controlled hyperventilation, intended to stimulate an altered state, lubricate the emotional gears, facilitate self-expression, and reveal personal habits and limitations. Bioenergetic breathing originated in the bodywork philosophies that emerged originally from Alexander Lowen’s interpretations of Reich and Jung.1 Interestingly, the same breathing style is called “round” breathing by the Chinese in the context of qigong, and has some deep roots in that culture, although in a much different way.
I learned about bioenergetic breathing from Joanne Peterson and Drs. Jock McKeen and Bennet Wong at Gabriola Island’s renowned Haven Institute for Professional Training.
How to breathe deeply, quickly, and safely
Bioenergetic breathing is basically just fast, deep, regular breathing. It is not a relaxing breathing method (though you may feel very pleasantly worn out and mellow afterwards). It emphasizes strong inhalation, which is assertive and full. It does not pause at the top or the bottom of the breath, forming a smooth sine wave. The mouth and throat are kept wide open,2 removed from the path of the breath, trying not to shape or control the flow of air. Most people attempt to breathe predominantly “with” their mouth, nose and throat. It is the body that breathes: the upper respiratory tract is just an obstacle course between the world and the engine of your respiration.
In a typical bioenergetic breathing session, you might work up to a vigorous pace of breathing in the space of a minute or two, continue for five to ten minutes, and then wind down again.
How fast is fast? “Fast” is roughly double to triple your normal resting respiratory rate — about the same as if you’d just been exercising. Depth is more important than speed. Go as fast as you reasonably can while still actually taking and expelling a good chest-full of air. Don’t cut corners off the amplitude of the breath just to get greater speed. The overall effect is pretty vigorous, but it doesn’t have to be ridiculous. If you were to breathe like this in front of someone, but act otherwise normal, they would say, “Wow, hey, what’s up? You been running or something? Doing some kind of deep breathing exercise?” It’s an eyebrow-raising pace, not a “call 911” pace. 😉
And what’s the point of all this breathing?
Breathing like this is stimulating, invigorating, and cathartic. It induces heightened and altered states of awareness and sensation. Much like meditation, it’s harder than you think, and the challenge is educational. Very unlike meditation, this is much messier, noisier and more emotional. Many people experience and struggle with strong emotions. More on this below. But there is clearly potential for this kind of breathing to be a catalyst for psychological change, which might also serve the goal of pain relief from personal growth — treating and coping with tough health problems with the pursuit of emotional intelligence, life balance, and peacefulness.
There may be some significant biological benefits, such as an anti-inflammatory effect,3 but I make no specific claims. For many years, the hope of such effects was never my rationale for practicing this kind of breathing — I stuck to the psychology of it — but I’ve been taking them much more seriously since Zwaag et al.’s experiment in 2022.4
For much more about that, see “Anti-inflammatory hyperventilation: I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow my pain away.”
Importantly, this is not “energy medicine,” not to me. You’re welcome to interpret it that way if it floats your boat, but I strongly prefer to frame it in terms of biology and psychology (see Do You Believe in Qi? How to embrace a central concept of Eastern mysticism without being a flake).
The surprising challenges of deep breathing
For something so simple, bioenergetic breathing proves to be a surprisingly intense challenge for nearly everyone. We may experience fear, frustration, apathy, exhaustion, grief. Obviously, the challenge isn’t technical — it’s just heavy breathing. So what is it that gives people such trouble?
Shallow breathing is the norm in our society (I’m Canadian), and many others, and it’s a mechanism of self-restraint and stoicism. These qualities are essential to be an effective adult, but they are also suffocating, figuratively and perhaps almost literally.
Deep breathing stirs up interesting and disconcerting sensations, and we have a startling repertoire of tactics for controlling and limiting the experience so that it is a little less boat-rocking. Some common avoidance behaviours that I’ve observed over the years include chain yawning, squirming, blowing and hissing, wheezing, dry throat, aches and pains that magically pop out of nowhere, an attack of silliness, giggles or ticklishness, and so on. As they attempt to proceed, many people will experience anxiety, frustration, grief, or — and this is a tough one — an intense apathy or fatigue (wilting, fading away from the exercise).
“The fade” is the most difficult of all avoidance tactics to navigate, and it happens to be my own signature reaction to deep breathing: when the going gets tough, I get sleepy and tune out. It’s a major defensive mechanism for me, and a great example of why this can be hard. Intense sessions can be a roller coaster ride, and making a habit of more regular and less dramatic doses is also strangely difficult.
Vigorous breathing exercises are a hard habit to sustain
Getting past those defenses is surprisingly difficult! It can feel like walking in sand. Many people probably would need coaching to get through even one strong session. And doing it regularly? Even just smaller doses? It’s curiously difficult to sustain this self-help ritual.
My plans to do vigorous breathing exercises regularly have never worked out for long. Breathing usually feels like a revelation after initially breaking through the resistance — “That felt amazing! Why didn’t I do this sooner?! I *want* to do this again tomorrow!” — but then quickly become quite burdensome. After only a few days at most, I start to feel extremely reluctant. I avoid it like an unpleasant chore, as though it involves far more exertion than it actually does. If I push through my reluctance, I often feel rewarded anew… but then, feeling virtuous, more procrastination is too easily justified, and before I know it another daily breathing experiment comes to an end!
But I still try from time to time, because it is so rewarding in the short term.
Parasthesia, tetany and tremors, oh my! Transient physiological consequences of deep breathing
The challenge is complicated by the fact that bioenergetic breathing tends to cause three harmless but potentially alarming side-effects: parasthesia, tetany, and tremors.
Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? Well, it is kind of exciting. This is powerful stuff. But these experiences really are harmless, and they tend to go away with practice. I myself went through them and came out the other side many years ago.
Parasthesia simply means “altered sensation,” usually in the form of tingling that starts around the mouth, at the fingertips and in the toes. As it advances and spreads, it is usually accompanied by tetany — sustained but mild contraction of muscles (and not the same as cramping from a tetanus infection). The hands and feet tend to “claw up,” and your lips will feel like you’ve just been to the dentist! This is different than spasm, and it is more stiff than painful. It wears off quickly. Finally, tremors may sweep through the body erratically, perhaps favouring a specific limb or side, but this too passes rapidly — and should actually be indulged when it occurs. Let yourself shake.
These symptoms are produced by an altered mind-body state, both physiological and psychological. The tetany and tingling are the result of some changes in blood chemistry: minor transient respiratory alkalosis, making your blood slightly less acidic.5 The tendency to tremor is partly the alkalosis, but more likely more of an emotional effect, “letting go.” We are all hanging on tightly to so very much, including our own bodies. The breathing shakes us loose. I advise you not to try to stop it.
Again, all of these side-effects are temporary. Bioenergetic breathing is not the same as hyperventilation.6 It is not dangerous in any way. (There is one huge exception to that statement: holding your breath underwater after hyperventilating is crazy dangerous: see “shallow water blackout.”) Any sensation you experience during breathing will go away as you slow down and stop.
Soul diving!
You might become extremely emotional during bioenergetic breathing. I’ve seen people start crying about something tragic that they haven’t expressed their sadness about in many years, even decades.
Most people feel like crying. Feeling sad/frustrated is the most common emotional reaction to breathing, but many also feel like they want to hit something — hint: try a pillow! — and any other kind of emotional experience is possible.
Sadness and anger are the two great under-expressed emotions. Most of us have deep wells of them. Bioenergetic breathing can be a handy way to deliberately induce cathartic crying jags. Indeed, some people notice that they cry every time they breathe like this, prompting the question, “What else is there? When will I be done crying?” The answer is, “When you’re done.” If you’ve been holding back sadness for thirty years, expect it to take a while. But trust me: there is something beyond all the crying. And that is what this work is all about. It’s soul diving.
Possibilities
Go to it. Slow down and stop if you get alarmed. There are no rules, but many possibilities. I’ll leave you with a few of those …
- Try breathing like mad for five minutes and then holding your breath for a little while. You’ll be impressed by how long you can do it. (But never, ever do this underwater!)
- Try breathing in different positions. Some classic positions are: draped over an exercise ball (face up or face down), touching your toes, leaning backwards, flat on your back with the knees up, squatting, child’s pose, while doing virtually any stretch …
- Try breathing in different patterns: three sharp breaths in, one out.
- Try breathing by “filling” different parts of your body: the deep belly, the solar plexus, the upper chest. For a real challenge, “fill” the less flexible parts of yourself.
- Try adding movement to the breathing, either rhythmically and repetitively, or randomly.
- Try visualizations. The possibilities in this category alone are virtually limitless. Two examples: pull energy in through your head with the intake and flush it out your toes on the exhalation; or visualize yourself like a coal that swells with heat and light when you blow on it! I like that one …
- Try breathing with music that you love.
- Try adding sound to breathing. Start with noisy exhalations, like you are groaning with satisfaction and weariness at the end of the week. That’s a good place to start. But you can work up to all kinds of noisy nonsense. If you have the privacy, do not hesitate to be emotionally noisy.
- Combining bioenergetic breathing with a hot bath. They interact synergistically with each other, resulting in a richer overall experience. See Hot Baths for Injury & Pain.
- And on and on …
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About Paul Ingraham
I am a science writer in Vancouver, Canada. I was a Registered Massage Therapist for a decade and the assistant editor of ScienceBasedMedicine.org for several years. I’ve had many injuries as a runner and ultimate player, and I’ve been a chronic pain patient myself since 2015. Full bio. See you on Facebook or Twitter., or subscribe:
Appendix: Difficulty breathing?
I want you to know that not all causes of breathing difficulties are necessarily scary. In many cases, the causes are related to emotional anxiety, “emotional constipation,” mild muscular dysfunction (trigger points) in the muscles of the torso, and or simple weakness that can be fixed with exercise.7 Emotional factors can easily be addressed by the breathing techniques recommended in this article. Muscle trigger points can usually be eased by self-massage or a professional therapeutic massage, or even just a warm bath. For more information, here are some relevant articles:
- When To Worry About Shortness of Breath … and When Not To — Three minor causes of a scary symptom that might be treatable
- The Respiration Connection — How dysfunctional breathing might be a root cause of a variety of common upper body pain problems and injuries
- Basic Self-Massage Tips for Myofascial Trigger Points — Learn how to massage your own trigger points (muscle knots)
- The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain — An extremely detailed guide to the unfinished science of muscle pain, with reviews of every theory and treatment option
But there are many causes of shortness of breath. A sudden and severe shortness of breath is often a serious symptom, of course, and you probably wouldn’t be sitting here reading this if you were gasping like a fish out of water! But some serious causes of breathing difficulties develop more slowly, and their causes can be difficult to determine. If it isn’t clear why you’re having difficulty breathing, you should seek medical care. Vigorous breathing may or may not be appropriate. You should ask your doctor if “deep breathing exercises” are a good way of trying to help the problem or not. There’s no need to get into the “emotional release” issue! Just ask if deep breathing exercises are okay.
Once again, if you’re concerned about shortness of breath, please see:
Related Reading
- When To Worry About Shortness of Breath … and When Not To — Three minor causes of a scary symptom that might be treatable
- The Anatomy of Vitality — What makes life tick? A poetic romp through the substance of vitality
- Do You Believe in Qi? — How to embrace a central concept of Eastern mysticism without being a flake
- Singing, Breathing, and Scalenes — Connections between singing, breathing, neck pain, and a strange group of muscles
- The Respiration Connection — How dysfunctional breathing might be a root cause of a variety of common upper body pain problems and injuries
- Why Do We Get Sick? — The curious and tangled connections between pain, poor health, and the lives we lead
- Mind Over Pain — Pain can be profoundly warped by the brain, but does that mean we can think the pain away?
- Haven (haven.ca). The Haven Institute for Professional Training is an educational facility on Gabriola Island, on the West Coast of Canada. Since the 1980s, they have been granting diplomas in counselling, but most of their workshops are also open to people who just want to work on their life skills. The most popular, “Come Alive,” is a 5-day experiential crash course in their basic concepts: people typically emerge from it with their minds pleasantly blown. There are certainly some flaky, hippy qualities to the place (but notably much less than similar places like Hollyhock and Esalen). No other source of inspiration and information was more important to my personal and professional development in the 80s and 90s.
What’s new in this article?
2023 — Added information about the physiology of breathing and a major new citation about the real potential for anti-inflammatory benefits of hyperventilatory breathing.
2017 — This is one of the oldest articles on PainScience.com, dating back to the early 2000s when I had quite different values and beliefs, long before I considered myself a “science journalist.” Today I gave it a thorough editing, so that the ideas and advice given are consistent with my publishing style and goals, and I wouldn’t be too embarrassed if, say, mentors in critical analysis were to read it. But that’s probably the last significant edit this will ever get — the topic is not a focus for me today, and the page is archived.
2005 — Publication.
Notes
- Wong B, McKeen J. The new manual for life. PD Publishing; 1998.
- And opening and holding the mouth wide open may be a challenge in itself for many people. Common jaw tension, and some of the psychological patterns coupled to it, can make it quite difficult. I have often been amazed at how little many people open their mouths even when strongly encouraged, in a safe situation, to “open wide.” See the tips on jaw relaxation in Massage Therapy for Bruxism, Jaw Clenching, and TMJ Syndrome.
- Kox M, van Eijk LT, Zwaag J, et al. Voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and attenuation of the innate immune response in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 May;111(20):7379–84. PubMed 24799686 ❐ PainSci Bibliography 54137 ❐
In this test, volunteers were subjected to a small dose of E. Coli endotoxin, enough to make someone mildly ill. Some volunteers were trained in meditation and a breathing technique (cyclic hyperventilation followed by breath holding) before exposure — and they had fewer symptoms than the untrained group, and several biological differences related to controlling inflammation.
- Zwaag J, Naaktgeboren R, van Herwaarden AE, Pickkers P, Kox M. The Effects of Cold Exposure Training and a Breathing Exercise on the Inflammatory Response in Humans: A Pilot Study. Psychosom Med. 2022 May;84(4):457–467. PubMed 35213875 ❐ PainSci Bibliography 52067 ❐
This fascinating experiment put dozens of healthy young male subjects through days of intense hyperventilation exercises and cold exposure, and then “poisoned” them with injections that caused substantial systemic inflammation. The effect of the poisoning was clearly attenuated by hyperventilation alone, and somewhat more so when combined with cold exposure. This was essentially a test showing that the Wim Hof Method is indeed anti-inflammatory … but also that the whole cocktail probably isn’t necessary, and in particular the cryotherapy isn’t necessary — just the relatively simple and easy hyperventilation exercises are probably the only “active ingredient” you need.
- Blood acidity/alkalinity is tightly regulated with a narrow normal range, but we are very sensitive to even small changes, and we can still stray a little ways out of the normal range just by breathing hard: respiratory alkalosis.
Bioenergetic breathing is technically hyperventilation — the physiology is quite similar — but they are not meaningfully equivalent. The context and the result are quite different. Hyperventilation strongly implies panicky and uncontrolled fast and shallow breathing. In striking contrast, bioenergetic breathing is willful and deliberate, somewhat slower, and much deeper than anything that would ever be described as hyperventilation clinically, or by anyone.
For instance, I know a nurse who heads a class 1 trauma nursing team (they deal with extreme traumas from all over British Columbia). She routinely witnesses, diagnoses and deals with patients who are certainly hyperventiling in the usual sense: panicked, rapid, shallow breathing. She has seen many people become convinced by the resulting tetany that they are — I am not making this up — actually dying!
The subjective experience of bioenergetic breathing is dramatically different, and someone doing it would never be identified as a hyperventilator, anymore than someone playing golf would be mistaken for someone attacking innocent bystanders with a club. It’s all about the intention.
And yet… yes, the physiology is indeed "hyperventilatory." Whether deep or shallow, fast breathing vents a lot of CO2, resulting in alkalosis and its distinctive symptoms. And maybe its medical benefits (again, see Zwaag).
- Padula et al. showed that respiratory training can increasing breathing power, while Enright et al. additionally demonstrated that it isn’t exactly easy: some real intensity and dedication is probably required. But it definitely can be done.