Conscious breathing


Conscious breathing is an umbrella term for medical and therapeutic methods that improve the breathing function. These methods involve directing awareness to breathing and developing habits that improve respiration. Human respiration is controlled consciously or unconsciously. Conscious breathing can aid in stress reduction, improving breath-related conditions.

Training methods

Meditation

Conscious breathing in meditation usually does not change the depth or rhythm of breathing, but uses breathing as an anchor for concentration and awareness.
Mindfulness and Awareness Trainings use conscious breathing for training awareness and body consciousness.
Vipassana Meditation focuses on breathing in and around the nose to calm the mind.

Psychology and psycho-therapy

Accelerating and deepening the breathing can be used to access suppressed nonverbal memories.
Rebirthing uses conscious breathing to purge repressed birth memories and traumatic childhood memories.
Holotropic Breathing was developed by Stanislav Grof and uses deepened breathing to allow access to non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Transformational Breath uses a full relaxed breath that originates in the lower abdomen and repeats inhalation and exhalation without pausing. It integrates other healing modalities and breath analysis. A key feature is intensive personal coaching and the use of 'bodymapping'.
Integrative Breathing combines specific benefits of various schools of conscious breathing according to the needs of clients.
Research considers drug abuse disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism and smoking.