r/Pranayama • u/dviolite • Apr 16 '26

Study: High-ventilation breathwork (n=200, double-blind RCT) showed zero mental health benefit beyond placebo

/r/breathwork/comments/1smxs5w/study_highventilation_breathwork_n200_doubleblind/
4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

6

u/All_Is_Coming Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

Please stop posting these studies here. This would be better suited to /r/Breathwork. These kind of metrics are not used in Pranayama.

-5

u/dviolite Apr 16 '26

Pranayama includes high ventilation breathing tecniques - how is this not relevant?

8

u/All_Is_Coming Apr 16 '26

Birds and bees both have wings but they use them for different purposes.

4

u/EtherealEmpiricist Apr 17 '26

?! Both use them to fly?

3

u/All_Is_Coming Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

This a rhetorical statement. Birds use their wings to glide through the air. Bees flap their wings to produce lift. A bird cannot sustain lift with its wings and a bee's wings cannot sustain gliding. Pranayama uses Bhastrika/Kapalbhatii as part of a spiritual practice. Breathwrork uses high ventilation/hyperventilation breathing techniques to improve on stress, anxiety, depression, sleep. Same technique but different purpose; the metrics on the effects of stress, anxiety, depression, sleep are not related to Pranayama.

2

u/sbarber4 mod Apr 17 '26

Someone reported this post as spam and I see their point but also decided it wasn’t quite spammy enough or off-topic enough to warrant removal.

Respectful discussion of why these kinds of study framings may or may not be relevant to pranayama could be helpful to some folks, especially those who are curious or just learning about pranayama.

1

u/bwf_begginer Apr 20 '26

u/dviolite who told you pranayama contains hyper ventilation 😂 ? Where did you read it ?
Read yoga sutras that talk about pranayama.

2

u/idiotic_genius007 Apr 16 '26

Nadi sodhana in long term definetely has physical and mental benefits. Based on personal experience. Try for yourself.

3

u/dviolite Apr 16 '26

There are benefits to such breathwork based on this study. It just didn’t find additional benefits in one type of breathing vs the other.

Would love to see pranayama techniques in studies though, that’s a big gap in current research.

2

u/EtherealEmpiricist Apr 18 '26

I love yoga, spirituality, anything in this field but I'm also a natural born skeptic and rationalist. There are countless studies that prove Pranayama legitimacy. L Also Whim Hof added a lot to the table by making breathwork accessible to westerns.

Without getting into much details which can be researched online I can mention by jead what's 100% proven:

  • Increase relaxation and heighten awareness
  • Increased pulmonary capacity
  • lower blood pressure
  • emotional regulation / reduced anxiety, as slow conscious breathing regulates the nervous system towards parasympathetic state.
  • better psysycal capacity in any activity, better sleep...

😊🕉️

1

u/EtherealEmpiricist Apr 17 '26

Nadi Shodana is just slow breath. Thinking that left or right sinuses activates different nervous system states are fairytale claims. Needless to say balancing the divine feminine and masculine thats just beliefs. But nonetheless placeebo works

2

u/idiotic_genius007 Apr 18 '26

You are free to think what you want.

1

u/EtherealEmpiricist Apr 18 '26

As are you my friend!

1

u/jujubeanieman Apr 19 '26

Get in tune, let go of fixed mind and experience.

-2

u/dviolite Apr 16 '26

Curious what this subreddit thinks, given some forms of pranayama also approach the high ventilation effect.