Slow Breathing Practices to Try at Home

You may have heard the saying that sometimes it’s the simplest solutions that are the best ones. You may also have felt semi-patronised with advice to take a few breaths to slow down. And yet, sometimes, this simple solution can work surprisingly well – and may have benefits beyond the immediate calming effect.

A seated breathwork class led by a teacher in a MoreYoga studio

Pranayama and breathing practices

There are many types of breathing practices, and you may have come across them in a yoga context (called pranayama when they have yogic roots and a spiritual aim to control our ‘life force’ or ‘prana’) or in other health and wellbeing contexts (I’ve been getting a lot of ads for a breathing app that apparently will transform my running).

They can vary a lot on how they manipulate the breath, and therefore on the effect they have on our body (and spirit?). They can include variations on pace, including fast breathing like kapalabhati, and slow breathing like ujjayi. They can also incorporate breath holds (called ‘kumbhaka’ in the yoga tradition), as can happen in forms of alternate nostril breathing and box breathing.

My personal interest is slow breathing practices, so I’m only going to talk about those here.

Slow breathing and the vagus nerve

Remember the semi-patronising advice of taking a slow breath when stressed or overwhelmed? There is actually evidence that slow breathing practices can have a calming effect.

This might be because slow breathing stimulates our vagus nerve, a rather important nerve that helps our brain and our internal organs communicate. The vagus nerve is our largest parasympathetic nerve; when it’s active, it tells our body that it’s safe to do what are called ‘resting state bodily functions’, like digestion (it’s also sometimes called ‘rest and digest’). This is in contrast to what happens when our sympathetic nervous system is active: increased heart rate and breathing rate, to get our bodies ready to fight or run away. As an aside, in general, we want a balance of both states. That balance is also at the heart of Yin and Yang yoga.

Typically, when our vagus nerve is activated, we may notice our breathing and heart rate slowing down, which can make us feel calmer. Research also indicates that slow breathing practices may also help with:

Lowering our blood pressure
Our mental health (including symptoms of depression)
Our immune health – this is more hypothetical based on the fact that the vagus nerve regulates our immune system, so it feels plausible that slow breathing could have effect here too

So, the evidence is promising, although it’s important to remember that nothing is definitive, and that not all claims and practices are equally well-researched.

“Sometimes it’s the simplest solutions that are the best ones.”

3 Breathwork Practices You Can Try at Home

Some yoga classes include breathwork, but why limit yourself to class? The beauty of breathing practices is that you just need yourself and 5–10 minutes.

1.Get comfortable – you can practice seated, with a tall spine, or lying down (with something under your knees)

2.Get still – set a timer for 5–10 minutes so you won’t have to keep checking the time

3.Get focused – start with a few moments of tuning into your breath, noticing the feeling of your body breathing

4.Get curious – try one of the practices below

5.Get reflective – at the end, take a moment to tune into how you are feeling, without expecting a change, just be curious – I’m a big fan of jotting down things I notice after practice

1. Coherent breath: even inhale and exhale

How to do coherent breathing

This is a practice where our inhale and our exhale are equal in length (the yogic variant is called ‘sama vritti’), and has a good body of research behind it. You can simply count your breath, use one of the tracks available (I often use the 2 bells track in classes) or, if you have an Apple Watch, you can set the Mindfulness app to vibrate at your preferred pace.

How to do it: Breathe in and out at a pace of 6 breaths per minute, or inhaling for a count of 5 and exhaling for a count of 5 – most of the research has been done at this pace. If that feels too long though, you can switch to a lower count of, say, 4 and 4. The key is keeping the breaths the same length and steady.

2. Ujjayi breath: the audible, victorious breath

This is a slow breathing practice that manipulates our exhale by constricting the back of the throat, which then naturally creates a longer exhale. It is an audible breath, which is why sometimes it gets the nickname of ‘ocean breath’ or even ‘Darth Vader breath’.

How to do it: Breathe in and out with a gentle constriction in the back of your throat; if helpful, imagine the exhale like pushing the plunger of a caffetiere down gently. This is a nice one to bring a visualisation into, imagining your breath travelling up and down your spine – which has the bonus of keeping the mind busy.

3. Cyclic sighing (or the physiological sigh)

This isn’t a yogic-tradition breath, but one that became popular a few years ago because the research study includes a certain scientist influencer. I like this because it has a nice balance of simplicity and complexity and may take away some of the boredom that might come from other practices.

How to do it: Take two sips of breath on the inhale, and then a long and steady exhale. The original research included a sighing exhale, but you could also do this with the lips closed.

If you enjoy slowing down with the breath, you may also like yoga nidra, another practice that invites deep rest.

Guided breathwork sounds better?

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About Dr Rachel David

Rachel is a science geek, yoga teacher and writer, among other things. She fell in love with yoga after completing her PhD. Since then, she has lived up to her geeky persona by completing a number of trainings with amazing teachers. She teaches vinyasa flow, somatics-inspired flow, yin yoga and yoga nidra, weaving poetry (her other love) into her classes where possible.

An immunologist by training, she is a little bit obsessed by the science of mind–body practices like yoga, in particular the intersection of yoga with mental and immune health (called psychoneuroimmunology). She has written extensively about this and other topics on wellbeing, including sleep – subscribe to the mind–body adventure Substack (https://geekyyoga.substack.com/) and explore Rachel’s extensive archive (geeky.yoga).