Die Forschung

Dallam, Kies, & Emerson, 2018 — Nasal versus oral breathing during sub-maximal running. Journal of Sports Research.

Runners who completed a training period of nasal-only breathing sustained the same VO2max and time to exhaustion while moving 22% less air and improving running economy by about 4% at hard steady effort.

Lundberg & Weitzberg, 1999 — Nasal nitric oxide in man. Thorax.

The paranasal sinuses continuously produce nitric oxide at concentrations around 100 ppb; nasal breathing carries this gas into the lungs, where it opens blood vessels and measurably improves the transfer of oxygen into the blood.

Jerath, Crawford, & Barnes, 2020 — Respiratory rhythm and autonomic modulation of emotions. Frontiers in Psychology.

Breathing is the only autonomic function that is also under voluntary control; the direction runs both ways, so deliberately changing the breathing pattern shifts emotional state even without conscious intent.

Ashhad, Kam, Kim, & Bhatt, 2022 — Breathing rhythm and pattern and their influence on emotion. Annual Review of Neuroscience.

The brainstem's respiratory rhythm generator connects directly to emotion and cognition through at least six pathways; slower breathing patterns are linked to calmer behavior, and fear is reliably heightened during inhalation and reduced during exhalation.

Vlemincx, Van Diest, & Van den Bergh, 2013 — A sigh of relief or a sigh to relieve: the psychological and physiological relief effect of deep breaths. Physiology and Behavior.

An occasional large breath resets the variability of the breathing pattern and produces a measurable psychological sense of relief; healthy breathing is not perfectly uniform.

Oku, Ogawa, & Kimura, 2022 — Temporal variations in breathing pattern and psychological states. Frontiers in Physiology.

Healthy resting breathing is deterministically variable, not mechanically even; slow breathing reduces tension across age groups, and breathing through the nose entrains brain rhythms in a way mouth breathing does not.

Leyro, Versella, & Zvolensky, 2021 — Respiratory therapy for anxiety: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping.

Pooled from 40 randomised trials with over 3,000 participants, breathing-based practice produced a medium-sized reduction in anxiety (g = 0.55 overall); biofeedback-guided practice against inactive controls showed an effect size approaching 1.0. Effects were sustained at follow-up.

Bentley, D'Angelo, & Powell, 2020 — Slow breathing, CO2 tolerance, and anxiety in secondary school students.

A six-week school pilot (N = 26, grades 10 to 12) using five-minute sessions three times a week found a statistically significant reduction in trait anxiety and a progressive improvement in CO2 tolerance across the weeks. Every participant completed the program.

Blake, Sherwood, & Porter, 2026 — Controlled breathing for anxiety: a randomised controlled trial.

The largest controlled trial of this type (N = 107), using six online sessions over six weeks, found a large reduction in anxiety scores for the intervention group compared to a waitlist control.

Bernardi, Sleight, Bandinelli, Cencetti, Fattorini, Wdowczyc-Szulc, & Lagi, 2001 — Effect of rosary prayer and yoga mantras on autonomic cardiovascular rhythms. BMJ.

Twenty-three healthy adults reciting the Ave Maria in Latin or a Sanskrit yoga mantra both settled to about 5.6 to 5.7 breaths per minute, matching the body's natural ten-second cardiovascular oscillation cycle. Baroreflex sensitivity increased and heart rate variability improved during both practices.

Salimi, Vahid-Ansari, & Bhatt, 2023 — Nasal respiratory fingerprints and the default mode network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

In an EEG study of 16 participants, air moving through the nose mechanically drives the brain's default-mode and integration networks, with an effect that persists regardless of attention and disappears entirely during mouth breathing. The mechanism is vibrotactile stimulation of nasal receptors, not airway chemistry.

Grassmann, Vlemincx, Von Leupoldt, Mittelstädt, & Van den Bergh, 2016 — Respiratory changes in response to cognitive load: a systematic review. Neural Plasticity.

A systematic review of 54 experiments found that mental work consistently speeds breathing up without changing breath size, producing a mild elevation in ventilation; trained, steady breathing is one way to counteract this drift during concentrated work.

Dallam, Kies, & Emerson, 2018 — Nasal versus oral breathing during sub-maximal running. (See also section 1.)

After completing a nasal-only training period, runners sustained full aerobic capacity while cutting ventilation by over a fifth and improving economy by 4% at hard steady effort.

Woorons, Mollard, Pichon, Duvallet, Richalet, & Lamberto, 2008 — Prolonged expiration down to residual volume leads to severe arterial hypoxemia in athletes during moderate exercise. Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology.

Twelve sessions of breath-hold running over four weeks produced an altitude-equivalent oxygen challenge (blood oxygen dropping to levels typical of 1,800 to 2,800 metres) and improved blood buffering at submaximal effort, which matters for how well the body handles the acid that builds up at higher intensities.

Courtney, 2020 — Breathing retraining in sleep apnoea: a review of approaches and potential mechanisms. Sleep and Breathing.

A scoping review of 14 studies found that several forms of breathing and airway practice reduced snoring and daytime sleepiness. The didgeridoo trial (Puhan et al., 2006) showed a moderate-to-large effect on airway disturbances. Singing exercises reduced daytime sleepiness and snoring frequency. Five minutes a day of inspiratory muscle training cut nighttime arousals and lowered stress hormones, with an effect comparable to three aerobic exercise sessions a week.

Li, Wang, Zhang, Zhang, Zhang, Feng, Duan, Liu, Wang, & Sun, 2023 — Effect of breathing exercises on oxidative stress biomarkers in humans: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Medicine.

The first pooled analysis of its kind, covering 10 randomised trials and 519 participants across healthy adults and several clinical populations. Breathing exercises significantly lowered a blood marker of cell-membrane damage (MDA) and raised both the body's main enzymatic antioxidant (SOD) and its non-enzymatic antioxidant (GSH). All three moved in the protective direction.

Stanescu, Nemery, Veriter, & Marechal, 1981 — Pattern of breathing and ventilatory response to CO2 in subjects practicing hatha yoga. Journal of Applied Physiology.

Eight Belgian yoga practitioners with four to twelve years of daily practice breathed at 5.5 breaths per minute at rest, versus 13.4 in matched controls, with larger breath volumes and lower total ventilation. Resting CO2 was measurably higher in the yoga group (39 versus 35 Torr). Their ventilatory response to rising CO2 was 60% lower, meaning the body's CO2 alarm had been calibrated upward through years of regular practice.

Bernardi et al., 2001 — (See section 4.)

Practitioners of two different traditions, using two different texts in two different languages, independently settled at almost exactly the same breathing rate and produced the same cardiovascular effect.

Murphey, 2022 — Validation of a non-invasive CO2 tolerance field test. Master's thesis, Boise State University.

In 28 trained endurance athletes, a structured breath-hold test showed excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.85) across two sessions a week apart; correlations with laboratory measures of aerobic threshold and end-tidal CO2 were not significant.