Restoring Natural Breathing - Buteyko Breathing Method

Breathing is one of the most powerful tools for influencing both our body and mind, and today, many breathwork practices are used for various purposes. Some systems involve specific exercises designed to stimulate certain physiological responses, but they aren't meant to be used as the default method for daily life.

The Buteyko Method is one such breathwork system, but unlike others, its primary focus is on restoring natural breathing patterns rather than stimulating stress-induced adaptations for specific health benefits. This isn’t to say that it’s superior or inferior to other methods—it’s simply a different approach. The Buteyko Method works particularly well for those who are not interested in more stimulating breathwork practices.

The Buteyko Method is a functional breathing approach designed to restore natural breathing habits through mindful and practical exercises. It emphasizes nasal breathing, cultivating a lighter and slower breathing rhythm. The goal is to improve carbon dioxide (CO₂) tolerance, establish a breathing cadence of 6 breaths per minute, and switch to nasal breathing as the default. In this way, the Buteyko Method retrains the respiratory system for optimal efficiency and health.

Understanding Functional Breathing

Functional breathing refers to the optimal breathing pattern to support health and balance in the body. For most people, retraining our respiration mainly means:

• Breathing through the nose while resting, talking, eating, exercising, working, and sleeping.

• Breathing slowly and lightly with proper diaphragm involvement to help develop CO₂ tolerance and prevent excessive chest movement.

Traditional medicine has long viewed deep breathing as beneficial, but breathing too deeply can reduce CO₂, disrupting the Bohr Effect. The Bohr Effect is the process through which oxygen is released from hemoglobin into the tissues. Over-breathing can reduce oxygen delivery to the cells, contributing to issues like asthma, high blood pressure, and anxiety disorders.

Misconceptions about healthy breathing have led to an incorrect understanding of what our body truly needs. Early exercise physiology mistakenly equated oxygen with energy, ignoring the crucial role CO₂ plays in oxygen delivery. This led to the widespread myth that deep, forceful breaths increase oxygen in the body.

Many fitness and military training programs promoted exaggerated mouth breathing to supposedly increase lung capacity, but in reality, this over-breathing reduces CO₂ levels. Our modern, industrialized world and chronic stress have led to habitual mouth breathing, hyperventilation, and chest breathing. Many contemporary breathwork practices emphasize deep inhalations, disregarding their impact on health.

While there are benefits to practicing hyperventilation in certain contexts, the Buteyko Method focuses on retraining the default breath rather than using specific exercises to induce short-term effects, and there is no reason that anyone has to choose one or the other, and each approach has its place.

The History of the Buteyko Method

Dr. Konstantin Buteyko’s work developed in the 1950s after observing the tendency in terminally ill patients to over-breathe—breathing more heavily than healthy individuals. He theorized that poor breathing habits were not just symptoms but a major contributor to many chronic illnesses. Dr. Buteyko developed breath retraining exercises to reduce breathing volume and increase CO₂ tolerance in order to restore natural respiratory function.

After years of refining his methods, Buteyko achieved success in treating patients with asthma, hypertension, and other disorders. Clinical trials in the 1960s yielded promising results, and in the 1980s, the Soviet Union officially recognized the Buteyko Method for treating bronchial asthma. Dr. Buteyko began teaching his method publicly in 1987, and by the early 1990s, it had made its way to the West.

Despite its recognition, the Buteyko Method faced skepticism within the broader medical community. However, contributors like Patrick McKeown have played a significant role in modernizing the method and expanding its application, particularly in the West. McKeown's work builds on Dr. Buteyko’s teachings while addressing some of the original method’s limitations and some of Dr. Buteyko's more questionable recommendations.

Breath Cadence in Traditional Spiritual and Meditative Practices

Traditional spiritual and meditative practices often emphasize slow, controlled breathing, which contrasts with the modern notion that deep, exaggerated breaths are always beneficial. Practices like pranayama in yoga, chanting, and prayer naturally regulate breathing rates, which can improve oxygenation, relaxation, and balance in the nervous system.

For example, traditional yoga practices aimed for a breathing rate of 5-6 breaths per minute, which is also the ideal rate for heart rate variability and oxygen delivery. The Buteyko Method similarly advocates this cadence, as it optimizes CO₂ tolerance and supports relaxation.

Buddhist chants such as "Om" naturally create a breathing rate of about 5-6 breaths per minute, and Tibetan monks use chanting and breath-holding techniques to improve focus, relaxation, and endurance at high altitudes.

Even in Christianity, rhythmic prayers such as the Rosary maintain a breathing rate of 6 breaths per minute, and Islamic prayers follow similar patterns, serving as subtle forms of breathwork.

These traditional practices, in essence, serve as early forms of functional breathing, naturally fostering better CO₂ regulation and healthier breathing habits.

The Shift Toward Deep Exaggerated Breathing

In contrast to traditional practices and modern functional breathing science, in the 19th and 20th centuries, a number of researchers theorized that big exaggerated breaths were beneficial for health. This landslide of bad advice was first based on misconceptions about physiology, and early exercise science. We would later learn in the early 1900s with the discovery of the Bohr Effect, which revolutionized our understanding of the role of CO₂ in the body. This busted the myth that more oxygen in = more oxygen delivery to our tissues. But first, let’s go chronologically and look out where everyone went wrong!

In the late 1800s, Justus Von Liebig, a German chemist, popularized the concept that oxygen equates energy, believing that oxygen was the primary driver of metabolism. Completely ignoring the Bohr Effect, which was not yet discovered, and the role of CO₂ in oxygen delivery, he suggested that taking in more oxygen increased energy production, a completely misleading ideal.

This misconception made its way into the foundation of early exercise science, suggesting that bigger breaths equates to better oxygenation, when with the discovery of the Bohr Effect, we know that this actually has the opposite effect.

Around the same time, English Physiologist, Edward Smith conducted some of the earliest studies on breathing rates and oxygen consumption, but his research also enforced the misconception that increased respiration was linked to a higher metabolism.

In the early 1900s, the New Thought Movement emphasized deep breathing for vitality. This movement greatly influenced modern self-help and alternative health practices.

Due to our misconceptions about healthy breathing, Yogic breathing practices were misinterpreted in the West, emphasizing big inhalations rather than the traditional controlled nasal breathing. Figures like Yogi Ramacharaka emphasized big deep breaths, often through the mouth, in an attempt to follow modern understandings of healthy breathing.

Physician and nutritionist John Harvey Kellogg, a menace of misconceptions about health in the 20th century, believed that taking big breaths cleansed the lungs and promoted longevity, without any understanding of CO₂-oxygen balance, and used over-breathing practices as part of his broader health philosophy, notorious for being a collection of dubious ideas.

Bernarr McFadden was an early fitness guru who promoted deep chest breathing and breath control for stamina and endurance, his magazine articles posited the myth that more air means better health. This influence early physical exercise and fitness training in the US & Europe.

Military training and physical education has also played a role in enforcing these harmful myths as status quo. In World War 1 & 2, military fitness programs emphasized deep chest breathing and forced inhalation to supposedly increase stamina and endurance. Soldiers were taught to take big breathws before exertion, reinforced by the idea that maximizing air intake was beneficial. This advice ignored CO₂-tolerance, nasal breathing, and functional breath control, all key factors in achieving optimal stamina and endurance.

Dr. Edmund Jacobson popularized a method in the 1920s promoting deep breathing to reduce stress, but his techniques were misinterpreted, leading to forceful breathing rather than the relaxed, natural breathing he was actually suggesting.

In the 1960s, during the aerobic fitness phase, deep breathing was suggested to promote physical fitness by proponents like Kenneth Cooper. Many aerobic instructors of the time emphasized exaggerated mouth breathing instead of controlled nasal breathing.

Between the 1970s-1990s, books and fitness programs continued to regurgitate the myth that big breath = more oxygen. This idea foolishly persisted despite consistent research demonstrating that over-breathing reduces CO₂ and impairs oxygen absorption by the tissues in the body.

The Bohr Effect

In 1904, Danish Physiologist, Christian Bohr discovered how Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) and pH levels affect the hemoglobin’s ability to transfer oxygen to the tissues in the body. When CO₂ levels rise, blood becomes slightly more acidic as pH lowers. Under these conditions, the hemoglobin’s affinity for oxygen is lowered, and it is more easily released into the muscles, organs, and brain.

When CO₂ levels drop, which happens during over-breathing or hyper-ventilation, the hemoglobin holds on more tightly to the oxygen, which reduces the oxygen delivery to the tissues in the body. This phenomenon is called the oxygen dissociation curve shift.

In a nutshell, the Bohr Effect demonstrated that balanced CO₂ levels are necessary for the optimal oxygen delivery to our muscles and organs, and that this can be achieved through slowing the cadence of our breath, not taking bigger, deeper breaths, which reduce the delivery of oxygen to these tissues.

Functional Breathing Research

In contrast to the deep-breathing movement, modern research such as the studies of Dr. Buteyko, Patrick McKeown, and Dr. James Nestor, have demonstrated that nasal breathing optimizes oxygen uptake; CO₂ tolerance and oxygen efficiency can be improved through slow-controlled breathing; and over-breathing contributes to issues such as asthma, sleep apnea, and anxiety.

There are so many breathing methods today that overlook CO₂ tolerance, ignoring the principle of how CO₂ influences oxygen delivery. That’s not to say that these methods are not valuable, but adopting techniques that improve your CO₂ tolerance and slow down our default natural breathing cadence can only help support any other breathing practice you enjoy.

The Take-Away

Finding a Buteyko instructor to guide you through the process of learning the method and putting it to practice can be necessary for many people, but if you are competent at self-learning, you can learn all of the techniques and approach online if you comb through enough info.

Just remember the key to Buteyko’s approach:

• Optimize oxygen release into tissues of the body by:

  • Improving CO₂ tolerance

  • Regulating the balance of CO₂ & Oxygen levels in the blood

  • Restoring nasal breathing as a habitual default

This is done through exercises that involve:

• Breathing with the proper engagement of the diaphragm

  • Exercises for breathing deeper but not bigger

• Taking smaller inhalations than we feel we need

  • Exercises for breathing lighter & slower

• Cultivating a natural breath cadence of 6 per minute

  • breath holding exercises

I think the key takeaway that anyone can benefit from, even if you never end up doing any Buteyko exercises, is to try and switch to nasal breathing, and try to slow down and quieten your breaths. These are easy exercises to stack into existing tasks in your day that you can do anywhere as you instill it as your new default.

If you’re ready to start practicing today, have a look at this video by Patrick McKeown. In it, he explains how walking with your mouth closed for 15 minutes a day is a simple breathing practice that requires very little concentration on breathing. Watch the video to learn more:

If you try it and think that it’s way too easy, try jogging with your mouth closed. I go for runs and even try sprinting with my mouth closed as a more intense version of this exercise. Why limit it to walking and running? You can also try resting, reading, working, driving, and any other activity with your mouth closed. The goal is to switch to nasal breathing almost exclusively. For that reason, I even put tape over my mouth when I sleep.

Even if you don’t want to dive into the Buteyko method, you can still start to adopt the principles of nasal breathing, and slowing the breath cadence in your own way.

About Alex's Background in Breathwork

Alex has never been a stranger to breathwork. In early childhood, his mother, a yoga teacher, introduced him to pranayama breathwork. He also attended several workshops and meditation courses in his youth that explored various traditions of such work. In his martial arts practice, he was introduced to Kokyu Ho breathing practice, and then Hara breathing (qigong breathing practice) over 20 years ago in his Shiatsu diploma program. Breathwork was also a major component in Sotai therapeutic exercise, and Meridian Stretching, which were also a part of Alex’s Shiatsu diploma program. Breathwork is a significant component in his current Kenjutsu (martial arts) practice, and breathing in motion is inseparable from the practice of natural movement, which Alex has studied and practiced for over a decade.

Most recently, Alex has taken the training program to become a certified Buteyko instructor. He has been aware of this approach for many years, and feels that there are a lot of helpful principles and exercises there that can help many of his personal Shiatsu & Sotai clients.

Alex is a lifelong student, and believes in continually approaching deeper levels of elements of movement, breathing, consumption, mental awareness, and connecting with nature. These are the elements that most deeply influence our health, and are also within our ability to influence with our actions and decisions.