Paced Breathing: How to, Benefits and Exercises
Changing our breathing pattern can ultimately affect how we feel and think. While breathing is largely an automatic and unconscious action, it is still one that we can learn to control consciously.
In clinical research, slow paced breathing has been shown to help reduce stress and anxiety, support athletic performance and recovery, and may help lower blood pressure. Slow, paced breathing exercises can help clear the mind of distracting thoughts, increase focus and activate the body's relaxation responses.
Many athletes also use paced breathing to help settle their heart rate, stay composed and pace their efforts. Likewise, many musicians learn the art of controlling their breath in order to be less breathy during singing and to sustain a long note.
Now with the OA Paced Breathing App and its built-in custom breath pacer, you have a pocket guide to support the practical teachings of Oxygen Advantage instructors. The variety of paced breathing exercises available in the app make it easy for you to start using techniques that can help you in a huge variety of ways.
What Is Paced Breathing?
Paced breathing involves slowing the breath and focusing on the length and duration of each inhalation and exhalation, to help calm the body and mind. Breathing in and out through the nose is the most effective way to practice paced breathing exercises.
Slow paced breathing helps to clear the mind, increase focus and elicit relaxation responses, referred to as parasympathetic responses.
When a person is in pain or under stress, the sympathetic nervous system is activated. This increases stress levels, heightens pain perception, and increases breathing rate and blood pressure. By consciously slowing our breathing, we can help shift the nervous system toward a calmer state.
Paced breathing is closely linked to the science of vagus nerve stimulation. Slow exhalations during paced breathing increase vagal activity, releasing acetylcholine at the heart and promoting a calm, focused state.
9 Paced Breathing Benefits
There are many ways that learning paced breathing can benefit our mind, body and overall health. The benefits of paced breathing include:
1. Calming the nervous system
Slow breathing is ideal for maintaining a healthy nervous system. The nervous system determines the pace of the heart rate. We see this when we are nervous or anxious and the heart rate increases.
Taking slow, gentle breaths helps to activate the body's relaxation response, calming the nervous system and returning the heart rate to normal. It can also improve mental clarity.
2. Anxiety and fear management
Anxiety and fear activate the body's fight or flight response. Breathing and heart rate get faster, pupils dilate and clear thinking becomes more challenging.
In a difficult situation, it is important to remain calm and clear headed. Regulating the breath with slow, paced nasal breathing helps dampen the stress response and activates the body's relaxation response.
In this state, we are less likely to be impulsive, angry and go into rage. We are more likely to remain calm, clear headed and come up with a good solution.
3. Support for healthy blood pressure
Slow, paced breathing may help lower blood pressure. The autonomic nervous system, which controls heart rate, has two branches, sympathetic and parasympathetic.
When we activate the sympathetic nervous system we go into fight or flight. When we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest response kicks in.
By practicing paced breathing, the vagus nerve is stimulated to slow the heart rate, and the baroreflex, the body's blood pressure control system, becomes more active during practice. This may help support healthy blood pressure alongside medical care. If you have high blood pressure, keep working with your doctor.
4. Stress and pain management
Taking slow breaths helps to manage stress. Paced breathing sends a message that calms the brain, inciting relaxation, a drop in heart rate and normalized breathing, thus reducing stress.
Similarly, paced breathing exercises may help you manage pain better. Slow breathing calms the nervous system, and some studies suggest it can reduce how intensely pain is felt.
5. Improved breathing control during exercise
Slow, paced breathing, especially through the nose, trains you to breathe calmly and stay comfortable with air hunger.
With practice, many athletes find they can keep their breathing calmer and more controlled during easy and moderate exercise, and recover their breathing more quickly after hard efforts.
You can track your breathing with the BOLT score test. BOLT measures how quickly you feel the first clear urge to breathe during a comfortable breath hold. It is a useful personal baseline, but it is not a predictor of athletic performance.
6. Improved endurance
Many athletes also use functional breathing exercises to control their heart rate, pace their efforts and support endurance. Paced breathing can support resilience and recovery. For runners, read our guide on how to breathe while running.
7. Reduced risk of panic attacks
Panic attacks occur when your nervous system goes into a frenzy. Heartbeat increases, breathing becomes faster and harder, and symptoms often include dizziness and muscle tension. A person can also be left feeling like they are suffocating or struggling to breathe.
The goal with paced breathing is to improve everyday breathing patterns, so one may be less susceptible to panic attacks. If you experience panic attacks, breathing exercises can be a helpful part of support alongside professional care.
8. Ease the severity of hot flashes
For those going through the menopause, hot flashes (sudden feelings of warmth in the body, usually intense over the neck, chest, and face) are a common issue. Paced breathing is a possible way to help manage hot flashes, although the evidence is mixed.
In a clinical study of 68 women, 58% of those practicing paced breathing two times a day reported a hot flash reduction over the nine-week test period, compared to 46% in the comparison group. This was a modest difference, and more research is needed.
9. Improved musical performance
Many musicians also learn the art of controlling their breath. Paced breathing makes it easier for professional singers and instrumentalists to sustain long musical notes. With more optimal breathing patterns, the singer is less likely to run out of air.
How to Do Paced Breathing: A Simple Exercise
Sit up straight and close your mouth. You will need to pay close attention to your breath. If you are a beginner to paced breathing, start off gently. The exercise is very simple.
Breathe in silently through your nose for 3 seconds and breathe out silently through your nose for 5 seconds. There is no pause between breaths.
If this feels very comfortable, you can try breathing in for 4 seconds and out for 6 seconds. A rule of thumb is that the exhalation should be one and a half times the length of the inhalation.
Keep each breath soft and quiet. Slowing down should not mean taking bigger breaths. Slow isn't the goal. Light is.
When you slow your breathing rate to between 4.5 and 6.5 breaths per minute, you help stimulate the vagus nerve to bring balance to the autonomic nervous system. Slower breathing also means a larger share of each breath reaches the lungs' air sacs, so breathing is more economical.
It is not necessary to breathe between 4.5 and 6.5 breaths per minute all the time. This is an exercise practice. If you practice paced breathing for 10 minutes daily, it is good. If you practice paced breathing for 10 minutes twice daily, it is great.
Paced breathing exercises with video and audio instruction are available on the Oxygen Advantage app.
The Oxygen Advantage Paced Breathing App
The free Oxygen Advantage app teaches you functional breathing exercises for improving health and athletic performance. The app contains a wide variety of slow, light and deep breathing exercises which can be tailored to suit your specific needs.
Breathe Slow exercises consist of cadence and paced breathing and can be adapted to suit most people, regardless of your breathing background, including people with asthma and those who exercise regularly. If you have a medical or mental health condition, such as PTSD, check with your healthcare provider and start gently.
The app is a great companion for supporting the work of Oxygen Advantage instructors and students alike and makes it easier to practice paced breathing exercises at home. Just use the app's breath pacer and follow Patrick McKeown's instructions and the cursor to practice timed breathing exercises.
Choose from a wide variety of background melodies to play while exercising, along with the calming voice of Patrick McKeown to guide you.
Download the free Oxygen Advantage breathing app
Master Paced Breathing with Oxygen Advantage
Paced breathing is one of the foundational practices of the Oxygen Advantage method. Developed by Patrick McKeown, the method combines nasal breathing, light breathing, slow breathing and breath hold training to support health, performance and sleep.
Paced breathing is part of the Breathe Slow practice, one of the core functional breathing exercises in the method. Practiced alongside breath holding exercises and nasal breathing at rest and during sleep, it forms a practical system for improving how you breathe every day.
If you are interested in trying the OA method for yourself, why not try our online breathing course, become a certified breathwork instructor, or find an Oxygen Advantage instructor near you.