10 Great Breathing Exercises For Your Mental Wellbeing

Today I’m presenting you with a selection of breathing exercises that help manage anxiety, help you sleep, and help you feel calm. I figured it might be useful to provide a list of breathing exercises after writing ‘3 Beneficial Ways CBT-I Will Help With Your Insomnia‘, to help get the ball rolling with helping you sleep or to just unwinded.

 

Using breathing exercises is one of the oldest and most efficient ways of treating stress (Everly and Lating, 2013). Thus, using a combination of these breathing exercises each day for between 10-30 minutes will help you reduce stress, depression, and anxiety.

 

 

Breathing Exercises

 

Box breathing

This breathing exercise is defined by its four equal parts. For this breathing exercise, you’ll need to do:

 

  1. Breathe in for four seconds through the nose.
  2. Hold your breath for four seconds.
  3. Breathe out through your mouth for four seconds.
  4. And hold for four seconds.
  5. Repeat as many times as needed.

 

4-7-8 breathing

The 4-7-8 breathing exercise is pretty straightforward, much like the box breathing exercise. All you need to do is:

 

  1. Breathe in through your nose for four seconds.
  2. Hold your breath for seven seconds.
  3. Breathe out through your mouth for eight seconds.
  4. Repeat this at least four times, or as necessary.

 

Deep Breathing

This one is a little more intense than the other breathing exercises. Here’s why:

 

  1. Breathe in deeply through your nose and try to feel your abdomen (you’ll see your stomach come out as your diaphragm moves down).
  2. Breathe out through your mouth and try to empty your lungs as much as possible.
  3. Try to breathe like this as slowly and deeply as you can.
  4. Repeat this a minimum of six times.

 

Long exhale, short inhale

This deep breathing exercise isn’t for everyone in every situation. One such situation is when you’re panic breathing during an anxiety attack, whereby deep breathing may cause you to hyperventilate instead. In such situations, this long exhale, short inhale breathing exercise might be better. All you need to do is:

 

  1. First, breathe out and push all the air out of your lungs before you breathe in, 
  2. Let your lungs do the work and breathe in normally.
  3. Now when you breathe out, try to breathe out for longer than you’ll breathe in. For example, if you breathe out for six seconds, you’ll breathe in for four seconds.
  4. Repeat this for a couple of minutes.

 

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Quieting response

This method was suggested by Medical News Today, which combines deep breathing with visualisation. You do this by:

 

  1. Relaxing the muscles in your face and shoulders.
  2. Imagine you have holes in the soles of your feet.
  3. Take a deep breath and visualise the hot air coming in through the holes in the soles of your feet.
  4. Imagine the hot air travelling up through your legs, through your tummy, and into your lungs.
  5. Relax each muscle as the hot air passes through them.
  6. Breathe out slowly and imagine that the air is travelling from your lungs, back through your tummy, through your legs, and out through the holes in the soles of your feet.
  7. Repeat until you feel calm.

 

Belly breathing

This is a simple method that gets you to use your diaphragm to breathe. What you need to do is:

 

  1. Place one hand on your tummy just above your belly button and put the other hand on your chest.
  2. Breathe in through your nose so that your tummy rises, but your chest stays relatively still.
  3. Round your lips and breathe out through your mouth.
  4. At the end of the out-breath, engage your stomach muscles to help push the air out.
  5. Repeat three or four times, or as necessary.

 

Coherent breathing

Also known as resonance breathing, was shown to reduce depression during a 12-week yoga intervention for those with clinical depression (Streeter et al. 2017). All you need to do is:

 

  1. Lie down and close your eyes.
  2. With your mouth closed, gently breathe in through your nose for six seconds, but don’t try to fill your lungs.
  3. Gently breathe out through your nose for six seconds, but don’t force it.
  4. Repeat for 10 minutes.
  5. Then take a minute or two to focus on how your body feels.

 

The picture is split in two with the top image being of a white man taking a deep breathe outdoors with his eyes closed. The bottom image being of a black woman in a park sitting in a yoga pose taking in a deep breathe. The two images are separated by the article title - 10 Great Breathing Exercises For Your Mental Wellbeing

 

Kapalbhati (Breath of fire)

This breathing exercise was used in a study by Bhimani, Kulkarni, Kowale, and Salvi (2011) to investigate if practising Pranayama (of which this breathing exercise belongs) could help reduce stress levels, which they found it did. To try the breath of fire breathing exercise, all you need to do is:

 

  1. Sit in a meditative posture or a comfortably seated position.
  2. Close your eyes and relax the muscles in your body.
  3. Breathe in deeply through your nose, expanding your chest.
  4. Breathe out forcefully by contracting the abdominal muscles, then relax.
  5. Continue this breathing pattern of breathing in passively and breathing out forcefully six times.
  6. Then complete 30 rapid breaths.
  7. Once you’ve finished your 30 rapid breaths, take a deep breath, then breathe out slowly.
  8. This is one round of Kapalbhati (breath of fire).
  9. Repeat two more times.

 

Simhasana (Lion’s breath)

This is another breathing exercise taken from Pranayama yoga. You’ll see how it got its name in a second. To do the lion’s breath, you need to:

 

  1. Get into a comfortable seated position on the floor, preferably a kneeling position if you’re able to.
  2. Lean forward slightly and put your hands on your knees or floor.
  3. Spread your fingers out.
  4. Breathe in through your nose.
  5. Open your mouth wide and stick your tongue out towards your chin.
  6. Breathe out forcefully while you vocalise the sound “ha”.
  7. Breathe normally for a while.
  8. Repeat this about seven times.

 

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Alternate nostril breathing

The clues in the name, this is a breathing exercise that gets you to switch which nostril to breathe through. To do this breathing exercise, you need to:

 

  1. Place your left hand in your lap.
  2. Take the right hand and rest your index finger and middle finger between your eyebrows.
  3. Using your right thumb, cover your right nostril and breathe in slowly through your left nostril.
  4. Then take the ring finger on your right hand and use it to pinch your nose closed and hold your breath for five seconds.
  5. Keeping your right ring finger on your left nostril, remove your thumb from your right nostril and breathe out through your right nostril.
  6. Now breathe in slowly through your right nostril.
  7. Pinch your nose again and hold your breath for five seconds.
  8. Now open your left nostril and breathe out.
  9. Now repeat this cycle by breathing in through the left nostril.
  10. Repeat up to 10 times.

 

As always, leave your feedback in the comments section below. Also, feel free to share your experiences of using breathing exercises in the comments section below as well. Don’t forget to bookmark my site and if you want to stay up-to-date with my blog, then sign up for my newsletter below. Alternatively, get push notifications for new articles by clicking the red bell icon in the bottom right corner.

 

Lastly, if you’d like to support my blog, you can make a donation of any size below. Until next time, Unwanted Life readers.

 

 

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References

 

Bhimani, N. T., Kulkarni, N. B., Kowale, A., & Salvi, S. (2011). Effect of pranayama on stress and cardiovascular autonomic tone and reactivity. Nat J Integ Res Med, 2, 48-54. Retrieved from https://europepmc.org/article/med/23362731 and https://njirm.pbworks.com/f/11Effect+of+Pranayama.pdf.

Everly, G., Jr., & Lating, J. (2013). Voluntary control of respiration patterns. A clinical guide to the treatment of the human stress response (pp. 223–235). Springer: New York. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5538-7_11 and https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-5538-7_11.

Jerath, R., Crawford, M. W., Barnes, V. A., & Harden, K. (2015). Self-regulation of breathing as a primary treatment for anxiety. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 40(2), 107-115. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-015-9279-8 and https://philarchive.org/archive/RAVSOB.

Streeter, C. C., Gerbarg, P. L., Whitfield, T. H., Owen, L., Johnston, J., Silveri, M. M., Gensler, M., Faulkner, C. L., Mann, C., Wixted, M., Hernon, A. M., Nyer, M. B., Brown, E. R. P., & Jensen, J. E. (2017). Treatment of major depressive disorder with Iyengar yoga and coherent breathing: a randomized controlled dosing study. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 23(3), 201-207. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2016.0140 and https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/acm.2016.0140.

74 thoughts on “10 Great Breathing Exercises For Your Mental Wellbeing”

  3. The deep breathing is what helps me if I am struggling in any situation, especially when I can feel a panic attack coming up or a very bad case of crying where I can almost not breath at all. I want to try some others of these breathing exercises. Thank you for sharing.

  5. OK before I read the rest of the alternate nostril breathing, I tried to do it and imagine I looked rather funny! I realise now that you use your hand to stop the other nostril! I find myself using box breathing mostly but would be interested to try the others here too. Thanks!

  7. This is such a helpful post that is full of detail and great suggestions. These are so helpful thank you for sharing.

    Lauren – bournemouthgirl

  8. I think I’ve used all of these except the “holes in your feet” one at least a couple times over the last couple of years. in fact, I used a couple of them this morning when prepping for my job interview. Great post, thanks for sharing 🙂

  9. These are great breathing exercises. Some of these I have not tried before, so I’m definitely adding them to my list.

  12. Really really love this post. Myself and so many others will find this post super helpful. I have quite bad panic attacks so reading these breathing techniques are really helpful. Thank you so much for sharing Xo

    Elle – ellegracedeveson.com

    • If you suffer from bad panic attacks, you might benefit for graded exposure, which I wrote an article about and which comes with a free workbook. It did wonders for my anxiety induced psychosis

  13. Glad i came acorss your post. Here I am at work practicng my box ? breathing. These breathing exercises does help to buss the stress. Another great post, Unwated life

  15. thanks for sharing these strategies and techniques, some are new to me and i’m so excited to try them out. love your work, glad i came across your page.

  16. This was such a interesting read! I had no idea there were so many different techniques of breathing! Thank you for sharing x

  17. I’ve just had a quick try of the alternative nostril breathing, and it is actually surprisingly relaxing. I’m surprised as I normally have not being able to breath out of one nostril, as it reminds me of having a cold. Interesting read 🙂

  19. Oh wow! I’m loving all of these! I’ve only ever heard of the 4-7-8 technique and didn’t know there were so many exercises, pretty neat. Thank you for such a useful post!

  20. Some great tips here.

    I want to try some breathing exercises soon, to add to my list of tools for managing anxiety.

    Will save this and give them a go 🙂

  21. Thanks for sharing! I use to practice breathing exercises so much in yoga but have been out of practice for the past year and a half. Looking forward to taking it up again 🙂

  22. These are great breathing exercises. I was quite surprised because there are some of them which I have never heard of and I was actually researching them on another tab as I was reading haha.

    I had a stress coping skills class where I learned a lot of different techniques which has helped me, these are some new ones that I just learned. I love this.

  24. The first time I tried breathing exercises in combination with a few yoga stretches, I was surprised at how actually sitting and breathing deeply and intentionally is different from the breathing we do on autopilot all day! It was refreshing and challenging to try a handful of different methods, including the breath of fire and box breathing.
    Thanks for sharing!

  27. So pleased to read all these breathing exercises especially breathing exercises through yoga are so effective, the lagst one is called Anulom- vilom which requires alternate nostril breathing. 4-7-8 technique is really effective as it calms down and help you to think calmly.

    I will try coherent breathing and box breathing as these are new for me, thanks for spreading so awareness and the emphasis on yoga is so important.

  28. I have started doing breathing exercises during my yoga session and truly it had done wonders for my anxiety. But I never knew there were so many other techniques out there too! Thanks for sharing!

  34. I’d never heard or some of these, I’m only used to deep breathing and box breathing, I did try each exercise as I was reading, thank you for sharing these exercises, they’ll help so many!

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