7 Breathing Techniques for Asthmatics
Updated: Oct 8
If you live with asthma, you've probably been told to take your inhaler as prescribed and leave it at that. But a growing body of research says there's a real, evidence-backed role for breathing techniques alongside medication.
In fact, we've been using these techniques for the past 5 years to help asthmatics regain control over their breath.
This post walks through what those techniques are, how to practice them, and what the evidence says each one can and can't do.
At a Glance
Benefits: Practiced consistently, breathing exercises build better control over your diaphragm and how you breathe day to day, which can mean less effort and more capacity during normal activity.
Anxiety reduction: Asthma and anxiety feed each other. Exercises built around slowing down and relaxing the breath can take some of the edge off symptoms that are driven more by stress than by airway inflammation.
Key techniques: Six are covered below, starting with nasal breathing, the foundation the rest build on, followed by diaphragmatic breathing, Ocean Breath, Hypoxic Holds, Breathe Light, and Humming Breath.
Breathing dysfunctions: Chest breathing, shallow breathing, and hyperventilation patterns show up in roughly 30 percent of people with asthma, and even higher in severe cases. These patterns can drive dyspnea and worsen symptoms like snoring and sleep-disordered breathing on their own, which is part of why correcting them matters as much as the exercises themselves.
Consultation: None of this replaces your asthma treatment plan. Talk to your provider before adding breathing exercises in, especially if your asthma is severe or unstable.
How Breathing Exercises Help Asthma
Many people with asthma find breathing exercises genuinely helpful alongside their medication. Done consistently, breathing exercises can help:
retrain dysfunctional breathing patterns, like chest breathing or chronic shallow breathing;
increase the strength and efficiency of the muscles involved in breathing, especially the diaphragm;
build better overall control over how you breathe, both at rest and when symptoms start to creep in.
Breathing exercises are sometimes recommended by a doctor, pulmonologist, or asthma clinic, particularly for people whose symptoms persist despite being on the right medication. They can be a useful addition for people with mild, moderate, or severe asthma, and they're especially relevant if dysfunctional breathing is part of the picture.
Strengthen the Breathing Muscles
Breathing exercises train the diaphragm and the other muscles involved in breathing to work more efficiently. Over time, that can mean less effort to move the same amount of air.
Promote Relaxation
Asthma can be triggered or worsened by stress and anxiety. Slower, more controlled breathing patterns can bring on a real relaxation response, which can reduce the frequency of symptoms that are driven more by stress than by airway inflammation itself.
Increase Breathing Control
Practiced regularly, breathing exercises help you notice and correct the breathing habits, chest breathing, hyperventilating, chronic shallow breaths, that quietly make asthma symptoms worse on their own, separate from inflammation.
Clear the Airways
Techniques like controlled coughing or huffing can help move excess mucus out of the airways, which can ease congestion and reduce irritation.
Support Overall Breathing Bealth
Practiced over time, these exercises can improve how efficiently you breathe day to day and support a better sense of control over your asthma, which tends to translate into a better quality of life.
It's worth being upfront here: breathing exercises are a genuine addition to asthma care, not a replacement for it. They should always be practiced alongside your prescribed treatment plan, ideally with guidance from your doctor or a respiratory physiotherapist, not instead of the medication that controls airway inflammation.
The Techniques, and How to Practice Them
Breathing training in the research isn't one single method. It covers a handful of distinct approaches, several of which are also central to the Reconnect Program.
1. Nasal Breathing
This is the foundation everything else on this list builds on. Breathing in and out through the nose, rather than the mouth, filters and humidifies incoming air and exposes it to nitric oxide produced in the nasal passages, a gas with bronchodilating and antimicrobial properties. Too much mouth breathing causes inflammation in the adenoids and tonsils, narrowing the airways and causing breathing to seem more difficult.
How to Practice Nasal Breathing
Close your mouth and breathe only through your nose, both in and out.
Keep your breathing slow and quiet. If you can hear or feel air rushing, you're breathing harder than you need to.
Practice this at rest first, then during light activity like walking, before trying it anywhere more demanding.
2. Diaphragmatic Breathing
Also called belly breathing, this trains you to breathe using your diaphragm rather than shallow, upper-chest breathing.
How to Practice Diaphragmatic Breathing
Sit or lie down comfortably. Place a block directly on your belly above the naval.
Breathe in slowly through your nose. Focus on letting your belly rise while your chest stays relatively still, pushing the block up.
Breathe out slowly, letting your belly (and block) fall. Your exhale should take longer than your inhale.
Continue for five to ten minutes, keeping the breath slow and unforced.
3. Ocean Breath
Known in yoga as Ujjayi, this technique adds a slight constriction at the back of the throat, creating a soft, audible "ocean" sound on both the inhale and exhale. That constriction slows the breath down and extends the exhale, similar in effect to pursed-lip breathing. It falls into the broader "yogic breathing" category, the largest group of techniques by trial count in the major Cochrane review on breathing exercises for asthma, though those trials evaluated yogic breathing as a category rather than isolating Ocean Breath specifically.
How to Practice Ocean Breath
Breathe in slowly through your nose, gently narrowing the back of your throat as if you were about to whisper or fog up a mirror.
You should hear a soft, even sound, like ocean waves, on the inhale.
Exhale through your nose with the same throat constriction, keeping the sound steady and the breath slow.
Continue for five to ten breaths, keeping the sound gentle, not forced or strained.
4. Alternate Nostril Breathing
Alternate nostril breathing is a slow, gentle practice that keeps your breathing quiet, nasal, and controlled. For people with asthma, that can help build the habit of breathing calmly through the nose and can ease the tension and urgency that often come with breathlessness. Early research is encouraging. One small study of children with asthma found improvements in peak airflow and symptom control after practicing it, though more rigorous trials are needed. It works best as a complement to your asthma plan, not a replacement for prescribed medication.
How to Practice Alternate Nostril Breathing
Sit upright and breathe out gently.
Close your right nostril with your right thumb and breathe in through the left.
Close the left nostril with your ring finger, release the right, and breathe out through the right.
Breathe in through the right, close it, and breathe out through the left. That is one round.
Keep the breath quiet, smooth, and unforced. Start with a few minutes a day.
Practice it when your asthma is well controlled, not during a flare-up. Stop if you feel chest tightness, wheezing, or breathlessness.
5. Hypoxic Holds
These are brief breath-holds after an exhale, meant to build tolerance to the urge to breathe rather than to hold your breath as long as possible. Because this works by deliberately creating mild air hunger, it calls for real caution if your asthma is unstable or severe, and it should never be practiced during an asthma flare or when you're feeling tight or wheezy. Stop well before any sense of gasping, dizziness, or distress.
How to Practice Hypoxic Holds
Breathe normally through your nose for a few breaths.
After a normal, relaxed exhale, gently pinch your nose or simply hold your breath.
Hold until you feel the first real urge to breathe, not until you're straining. This is sometimes called your control pause.
Release and resume calm nasal breathing without a big gasp or deep breath.
6. Breathe Light
This technique is built on the idea that many people with asthma chronically over-breathe, and it works by gently reducing breath volume until you feel a mild, tolerable air hunger. As with hypoxic holds, this works by design with reduced breathing, so it warrants extra caution if your asthma is unstable or severe, and the full method is meant to be learned from a certified practitioner rather than pieced together from a blog post.
How to Practice Breathe Light
Sit upright and breathe naturally through your nose for a few breaths.
Gently and gradually reduce the size of each breath, as if you're breathing just a little less air than feels automatic.
Aim for a light, quiet breath that leaves a small, tolerable sense of air hunger, not a held breath or a gasp.
Continue for one to two minutes, then return to normal breathing.
7. Humming Breath
Known in yoga as Brahmari, this technique pairs a long exhale with an audible hum. A widely cited physiology study found that humming increases nasal nitric oxide output by as much as 15-fold compared to quiet exhalation. Nitric Oxide is a vasodilator so it opens the blood vessels and creates better blood flow and oxygenation to the body.
How to Practice Humming Breath
Sit comfortably and take a slow breath in through your nose.
As you exhale, close your mouth and make a steady humming sound through your nose.
Keep the hum soft and even for the full length of the exhale.
Repeat for five to ten breaths.
Dysfunctional Breathing and Asthma
A meaningful share of people with asthma are also dealing with a second, separate problem layered on top of their airway disease: dysfunctional breathing. This refers to a breathing pattern, chest-dominant rather than diaphragmatic, chronically shallow, or prone to hyperventilation, that persists and causes symptoms on its own, independent of how inflamed the airways actually are.
This matters because dysfunctional breathing produces its own symptoms that look and feel like asthma but don't respond to more asthma medication. Dyspnea, the sensation of not getting enough air, is a good example. It can come from genuine airway narrowing, but it can also come from a breathing pattern that's chronically too fast, too shallow, or too chest-dominant, with no bronchoconstriction behind it at all. Someone in that second category can increase their inhaler dose indefinitely without relief, because the inhaler isn't treating the actual problem.
Sleep is a related piece of this picture. Snoring and other signs of sleep-disordered breathing, including obstructive sleep apnea, show up more often in people with asthma than in the general population. A study of children found sleep-disordered breathing was associated with roughly 55 to 58 percent higher odds of asthma in both children and adults.
But the pattern across the existing trials points the same direction: breathing retraining works best, and most convincingly, in people who have a real breathing pattern problem to correct, not as a general-purpose add-on for anyone with an asthma diagnosis. Screening for chest breathing, shallow breathing, and hyperventilation patterns, rather than assuming every asthma patient will respond the same way, is what separates a well-targeted breathing program from a generic one.
Who Benefits Most
Breathing training isn't necessarily for everyone with an asthma diagnosis. It's aimed at people whose asthma continues to cause symptoms and quality-of-life impairment despite adequate pharmacological treatment, or who have high bronchodilator use. If this is you, we highly recommend adding these practices into your routine.
Even is your asthma is minimal and you just don't want to use an inhaler anymore, join a breath program or incorporate these techniques into your everyday life.
Common Questions
Can breathing exercises replace my inhaler?
No. Breathing techniques are meant to sit alongside your prescribed treatment, never in place of it, and never in place of rescue medication during an asthma attack. However, with consistent practice we've seen many people abandon their inhalers and a few months of breath retraining.
How long before I'd notice a difference?
Most of the research measuring meaningful improvement tracked people over several weeks to three months of consistent practice, not a single session.
Do I need an instructor, or can I learn this from a video?
Nasal breathing, diaphragmatic breathing, and Ocean Breath are straightforward enough to start from clear written or video instruction. Breathe Light and Hypoxic Holds are different: they work by deliberately creating air hunger, and the research showing the strongest results involved real instructor contact time, five or more hours of instruction in the higher-intensity studies. Those two in particular are meant to be taught properly, not self-taught from a single article.
Is Breathe Light or Hypoxic Holds safe if my asthma is severe?
Talk to your doctor first. Because both techniques work with reduced breathing or breath-holds, they warrant extra caution in severe or unstable asthma, a concern raised in the clinical literature even though it hasn't been formally tested in a dedicated safety trial. Neither should ever be attempted during an asthma flare.
Making This Part of Your Asthma Care
Talk to your doctor or a respiratory physiotherapist before starting, especially if your asthma is severe or poorly controlled.
Never substitute a breathing technique for your prescribed reliever or controller medication, or for rescue medication during an acute attack.
Look for a program with real instructional depth rather than a five-minute video, particularly for Breathe Light and Hypoxic Holds.
Track your symptoms and reliever use over a few weeks of practice. The benefit shown in research is measured in quality of life and reported symptoms, not necessarily a spirometer reading, so how you feel day to day is the metric that matters most here.
Breathing techniques for asthmatics aren't a cure, and they're not a replacement for your inhaler. What the evidence does support is more specific and more useful: for people whose asthma symptoms persist despite adequate medication, or who lean heavily on rescue inhalers, a real, evidence-backed breathing retraining program can meaningfully improve quality of life and day-to-day symptom burden.
Approached as an addition to good medical care rather than an alternative to it, these techniques are one of the few tools in asthma management a person can practice themselves, every day, at no cost beyond the time it takes to learn them properly.
Join Our Community
To learn more about breathwork, check out our online courses. If you really want to dive in and become certified, join ourself-paced our group online Instructor Training and learn our 3-part framework on how to guide others out of dysfunctional breathing patterns and into better self-control and emotional knowledge.
Want to really get out there? Join us in the Indian Himalayas on our breath expedition next July 2027!
Kevin Connelly
Kevin is an author, researcher, and breath expert who's led thousands of wellness enthusiasts through breathwork experiences around the world. He is one of the leaders in breathwork-related research and conducts studies on the effects of breath on the heart and brain. Kevin delivers breath workshops and trainings for retreats, corporate events, and businesses worldwide.
Sources
Thomas & Bruton 2014 review, quoted directly in "Who Benefits Most"
Santino et al. 2020 Cochrane review, used in "How Controlled Breathing Can Improve Asthmatic Symptoms"
Campbell et al. 2018 Buteyko Cochrane review, still relevant since Breathe Light is explicitly the core Buteyko technique
Thomas et al. 2003 Thorax trial, central to both the dysfunctional breathing section and the evidence section
Thomas et al. 2001 BMJ prevalence study, the source of the 30 percent dysfunctional breathing figure
AHRQ comparative effectiveness review, used in the evidence section
Weitzberg & Lundberg 2002, the humming nitric oxide study
Zhao et al. 2015, the sleep-disordered breathing and asthma study
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