How Rhythmic Breathing Controls Emotions and Mental States

The rhythm of the breath is one of the most obvious physical indications of a person’s emotional and mental state. When relaxed, the breathing reflects an emotional calm and indicates a state where the attention can be focused. Disruptions of breath generally are associated with emotional or mental disturbances. The breath becomes “agitated in anger, stopped momentarily in fear, gasping with amazement, choking with sadness, sighing with relief, etc.” Where the mind is randomly influenced by fleeting emotions and thoughts, it is not calm and this is reflected in the breathing.

Though emotional and mental states are difficult to control, they are intimately connected to irregularities in breathing, and the breath can be controlled. This suggests that learning to consciously and deliberately regulate the breath is a key to mastery of both emotions and the mind. Beginning students of yoga are often amazed at how quickly they gain control over their emotions by working with the breath. Anyone can verify for himself the notion, long held in yoga, that pauses and jerks in the breath disrupt the continuity of thought. By learning to breath gently, smoothly and without irregularities, students of meditation are able to reduce distracting thoughts and achieve heightened concentration.

The breath not only serves as a link between a person’s body and mind, but is also the most direct channel of interchange between the person and the surrounding environment. Through breathing we take in oxygen, trying ourselves into the larger ecological system which connects plants and animals in an overall cycle of energy exchange. The act of breathing unites us with this larger energy pool and integrates us into the greater context of nature. The breath “is the result of a current which runs not only through the body, but also through all the planes of man’s existence…the current of the whole of nature…is the real breath… It is one breath and yet it is many breaths.”

But when the breath is not free-flowing, interchange with surrounding sources of energy is limited. The above descriptions of breathing habits such as “choking with sadness” portray constrictions in this interchange. Thus emerges a “breath language” which is in many ways analogous to “body language.” It reveals the characteristic ways in which one relates to his surroundings: holding the breath, sighing, and wheezing are other items of vocabulary in this language of breath.

Source: “Breath: The Tide of Life,” from Yoga & Psychotherapy: The Evolution of Consciousness, by Swami Rama, Rudolph Ballentine, MD, Swami Ajaya, PhD