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How do you breathe just before stepping into cold water? The exaggerated nasal inhale when someone asks you an important question, the short shallow rapid breaths of anticipating a needle poke, or the sigh of relief when you were about to drop your phone into the toilet—but didn’t. These are moments that demonstrate how breathing changes with what we expect to happen next.

Our breathing patterns are associated with what we do, think, and feel whether we are aware of them or not—every moment of every day. Imagine the pattern of your breath over an entire day: What shape would it take? When would it be rapid or slow, deep or shallow, holding or hyperventilating, light or heavy? Would it align with the task at hand, overshoot, or be suboptimal? We all have unique breathing habits and patterns—a breathing signature, if you will. It may be adaptive or maladaptive. Breathing can oscillate with our brain waves and help us think and feel better.

Breathing is an integration of many qualities, moving parts, and chemicals: the depth we breathe (amplitude), how fast we breathe (frequency), and where we breathe from (nose, chest, belly, etc). Messages are carried along the vagus nerve from the body and organs (interoceptive information) to the brain. The phrenic nerve transmits motor signals from the brain to our lungs and diaphragm. Muscles throughout our body engage or disengage with each breath and are related to postural habits fluctuating in pattern and stability. All of these factors are working in coordination to optimize our interactions with our internal and external environments all based on our perception of what is occurring. Notice at this moment your posture and breath as you are reading this. What do you notice about the amplitude, frequency, and location of your breath?

Your Unique Breathing Signature

Many ancient breathing practices from around the world have integrated breathwork with spirituality and health for thousands of years (such as yogic, Zen, and qigong to name just a few). Biofeedback has become a popular treatment tool that objectively measures breathing mechanically (chest, abdomen, shoulders) and sometimes also chemically (how much CO₂ you expire). Your unique biofeedback respiration profile might include your baseline breathing pattern, changes in anticipation of a stressful task, your breathing while performing the task, and the pattern and how quickly and fully your breathing returns to baseline (recovery).

Your unique breathing profile is highly time and content sensitive, depending on your nervous system baseline, your past experiences, current circumstances including the task before you, and what you believe about yourself, the world, and the moment. Our breath is powerful because it affects every cell and biological rhythm in our body, oscillating along with our brain waves, hormones, heart patterns, and organ function.

Why You Breathe the Way You Do: It’s Adaptive, or It Once Was

Your current breathing patterns may have developed under stressful conditions. Breathing shallowly from your chest or holding your breath unnecessarily, for example, may be an adaptation that was important at the time that your brain and body were under stress even if it no longer serves you. This may have a ripple effect into every other part of your brain and body. The long-term effects may have negative consequences such as less oxygen to the brain, muscles, or extremities, contributing to anxiety, panic, fatigue, and lack of focused attention and stamina. The way you breathe can contribute to chest pain and worsening health conditions, affecting attention, choices, and worsening anxiety and depression.

New Research on Brain and Breath

A single breath affects the global physiological network of our nervous system. Since how we breathe affects all corners of our body and brain, it can feed unhealthy maladaptive cycles, but it can also be a very simple place to intervene to feel better. Better breathing can be a systemic treatment, an allostatic treatment, to support mental and physiological health and can improve many symptoms of various neurological conditions. (More attention is being paid to how this all works since the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Allen et al. (2022) found slow breathing practice exerts a substantive, rhythmic influence on our perception, emotion, and cognition, largely through oscillations that synchronize with other neurons. In other words, when our breath and brain waves synchronize, it optimizes how we perceive new information, how we process emotions, and what we decide to do in any given moment. Entrainment of brain wave rhythms with breath leads to neural gains that may be experienced as a better relationship with our own thoughts and feelings—managing fear, anger, sadness, and confusion in ways that can profoundly impact how we heal.

7 Ways to Breathe Better Now

I am frequently asked which breathing technique is best—there are so many to choose from. Whatever technique you choose, know that paying attention is a great start. Listen to your body, attuning to your breath without worrying too much about a technique just yet, and making small and sustainable changes. Below are seven suggestions to start now:

1. Notice and attune. How are you breathing right now? Notice how your breath changes with different tasks, feelings, and thoughts. Attune to your personal respiratory baseline.
2. Breathe through your nose. This stimulates your brain via epithelium and chemical receptors. Nasal breathing directly connects to the hippocampus and reverberates through the entire brain including the limbic system and default mode network structures.
3. Exhale. Anytime, but especially when you notice you are holding your breath or shallow breathing...exhale. Then extend the exhale beyond where you normally would. Rather than take a deep breath, leave one, by extending one slow long exhale. Inhale easily and naturally.
4. Deepen and expand. Drop your focus to your belly button or lower, especially when you notice chest or shoulder breathing. Expand the physical space you are breathing from.
5. Try less. Breathe with minimal effort, extending the least force needed for the task at hand. Shift to low and slow breathing, but don’t increase the work involved. Keep it light and easy.
6. Practice daily. Regular daily practice can accumulate and lead to health benefits. Practice at a regular set time of day, even if just for a few minutes. Your body will learn to anticipate this and shift accordingly.
7. Just breathe. As with anything, avoid seeking perfection and just breathe.