We have been focusing on the spiritual benefits of breathwork a lot recently, but I don’t want you to ignore the chemical effects of breathing on your mental and physical wellbeing, or how it influences your chemistry when you’re stressed or anxious. And so this month, let’s dig into this a bit.
Breathwork is important during times of mounting pressure, rapid change, and major life challenges. When you experience uncertainty, feel numb or paralyzed by fear, or when it seems your life is falling apart, breathwork can come to the rescue!
For over 50 years I have been training myself, other individuals and groups, to survive and thrive in high stakes life and death situations, and how to remain clear, centered, creative and resilient in a volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous world.
This is when getting into the flow state–the zone–is so crucial. In these situations, our brains struggle to predict and anticipate evolving realities and we are forced to deal with compelling biological urges and powerful emotional and psychological forces.
Our nervous system mixes prior experiences with new incoming sensory data and it generates a simulation of the immediate future. Am I safe? Do I risk this? Can I trust the map or these people? Is this the best decision? Am I able to shape the future, or am I clueless with no idea of what will happen next?
Human beings evolved in a very different world than the one we live in today. Changes that once took centuries to occur now happen in a few weeks, months, or years. The fastest way to feel powerless, confused, and burned-out is to lose confidence in our ability to influence outcomes.
When we cannot predict things, we experience stress, anxiety, and even depression. And this makes us less creative and more reactive. We shy away from exploration and long-term thinking and we focus on short term crisis management. We suffer from cognitive deficits, blind spots, and biases. Fear of loss blocks our awareness of potential opportunities.
When the ground is moving under our feet, we need to remain clear and sharp, and not crack under pressure. And this often happens during accelerated healing, growth, and personal evolution. We need to be good at relaxing and able to go with the flow rather than fight against oncoming obstacles.
The ability to adapt becomes far more important than the ability to predict. In fact, there is very little real certainty or predictability in this world. And so, we are far better off focusing on and training ourselves and our clients to be resilient and adaptive.
During breathing sessions our clients unconsciously resonate with our state, our pace, our emotional tone, our optimism or uncertainty, our confidence or concerns. And so it is very important that we regulate our own energy during a breathwork session.
We need to guard against over-breathing and breath-holding. We need to respond and not react. We need to manage our energy, our arousal, our mental, emotional and chemical states. And that is exactly what breathwork is designed to help us do.
When you experience anxiety, you feel fear—even when there is no real danger. Your breathing becomes shallow, irregular, or gets stuck. You may even find yourself holding your breath or trying to catch your breath. Your legs feel weak, your heart begins to race and your chest may feel tight.
This can happen before an important conversation, while speaking in front of a group, in a crowded room, at the dentist’s office, on an airplane. And sometimes it seems to come out of nowhere for no apparent reason at all.
What many people don’t realize is that the relationship between anxiety and breathing works both ways. Anxiety changes the way you breathe, and the way you breathe creates, intensifies, or sustains anxiety.
Your body and brain does not seem to know the difference between an imagined threat and a real one. A stressful thought, memory, or anticipation can trigger the same physiological reactions as an actual danger. When this happens, your breathing pattern changes—and this breathing pattern sends a powerful signal to your nervous system.
Over time, your stress-related breathing habits can become automatic. They create a psycho-physiological feedback loop—a kind of cybernetic cycle—in which anxious thoughts affect breathing, and dysfunctional breathing generates feelings of anxiety.
The result is a self-perpetuating loop. To understand this process, we need to appreciate the critical role carbon dioxide (CO₂) plays in human health and well-being. Most people think of carbon dioxide as nothing more than a waste gas that must be exhaled.
But carbon dioxide is one of the most important regulators in the body. It helps control blood flow, it influences nervous system activity, it regulates pH balance, and it plays a crucial role in delivering oxygen and nutrients to the brain and cells of the body.
When carbon dioxide levels drop too low—which often happens during chronic hyperventilation or stress breathing—a cascade of physiological changes occur. Blood vessels constrict, oxygen delivery is inhibited, and a host of uncomfortable feelings and sensations may occur:
- Dizziness or lightheadedness
- Tightness in the chest
- Tingling in the hands or face
- Feelings of unease or panic
- Mental fog or difficulty concentrating
- Hyper-reactivity or uncontrollable shaking
- Increased sensitivity to sounds, scents, and stress
These symptoms are often interpreted as signs that something is wrong, which can create even more anxiety and further disturb breathing. Meanwhile, the most ancient part of your brain monitors the CO2 levels in your blood and automatically adjusts your breathing rate, depth, rhythm, and pattern to maintain balance.
This regulation happens while you sleep. It happens when you eat, speak, exercise, or watch a movie. It also happens when you deliberately control your breathing. Healthy breathing, therefore, is not simply a matter of breathing through the nose or the mouth, in the chest or in the belly, or fast or slow, deep or shallow.
Those things matter. But healthy breathing is also about maintaining the right balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. And it is about supporting all the body’s other natural regulatory mechanisms to function efficiently.
Your breathing influences your chemistry. Your chemistry influences your sensations. Your sensations influence your emotions. Your emotions influence your thoughts. And your thoughts influence your breathing. And the cycle continues or spirals out of control.
A quick breath taken in fear is different from a gentle breath taken with calm awareness. And the way you are breathing right now as you are reading this is either reinforcing stress and anxiety—or acting to break the cycle.
Learning to recognize and correct dysfunctional breathing habits and patterns is one of the most direct and effective ways to interrupt the anxiety loop, to restore balance of the nervous system, and to cultivate a greater sense of calm, resilience, and well-being.
The path through stress and out of anxiety begins with something very simple, very basic, and very profound. It begins with your next breath. And that is exactly why breath awareness and breath control—breathwork—is so important. And so, I encourage you today to practice—every day!
Wishing you much luck in your practice and many blessings on your path.
June, 2026
Breathmastery.com
