High ventilation breathwork practices: An overview of their effects, mechanisms, and considerations for clinical applications

Abstract

High Ventilation Breathwork (HVB) refers to practices employing specific volitional manipulation of breathing, with a long history of use to relieve various forms of psychological distress. This paper seeks to offer a consolidative insight into potential clinical application of HVB as a treatment of psychiatric disorders. We thus review the characteristic phenomenological and neurophysiological effects of these practices to inform their mechanism of therapeutic action, safety profiles and future clinical applications. Clinical observations and data from neurophysiological studies indicate that HVB is associated with extraordinary changes in subjective experience, as well as with profound effects on central and autonomic nervous systems functions through modulation of neurometabolic parameters and interoceptive sensory systems. This growing evidence base may guide how the phenomenological effects of HVB can be understood, and potentially harnessed in the context of such volitional perturbation of psychophysiological state. Reports of putative beneficial effects for trauma-related, affective, and somatic disorders invite further research to obtain detailed mechanistic knowledge, and rigorous clinical testing of these potential therapeutic uses.

Keywords: Alkalosis; Breathwork; Cerebral blood flow; Consciousness; Holotropic; Hyperventilation; Hypocapnia; Interoception; Neuronal excitability; PTSD; Pranayama; Rebirthing; Sudarshan Kriya Yoga; Sympathetic Nervous system; Wim Hof.