Before I found sound healing, I found breath.
Not the kind where someone tells you to “just breathe” when you’re anxious, which has never helped anyone. The kind where you change the pattern of your breathing deliberately and your whole nervous system responds. Where something shifts in your body that you can’t quite name but you can definitely feel.
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Breathwork is one of the fastest-growing practices in wellness right now, and it deserves more than a trending hashtag. Searches for breathwork have grown over 200% in the last few years, and new research is showing why: it actually works, in measurable ways, on your brain chemistry and your stress response. But the word “breathwork” covers a huge range of practices, some of which feel like a gentle wind-down and others of which can produce altered states that people compare to plant medicine ceremonies.
So let’s break it down.
What Breathwork Actually Is
Breathwork is any intentional practice that uses specific breathing patterns to shift your physiological or psychological state. That’s a broad definition because breathwork is a broad category. It ranges from one minute of slow deep breathing before a meeting to a two-hour guided session involving rapid breathing techniques that can produce profound emotional releases and non-ordinary states of consciousness.
What they all have in common is this: breathing is one of the only automatic functions of your body that you can also control consciously. Your heart rate, your digestion, your hormone release — those happen without your input. Your breath does too, but you can also override it at any moment. And when you do, you gain a direct line to your autonomic nervous system, the system that governs whether you feel safe or threatened, calm or activated.
This is why breathing slowly and deeply doesn’t just feel relaxing. It causes relaxation, physiologically, by activating the parasympathetic nervous system through the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your body and runs from your brainstem down through your heart, lungs, and digestive organs. Extended exhales stimulate it directly. When the vagus nerve is activated, heart rate drops, cortisol decreases, digestion resumes, and the body shifts from fight-or-flight into rest-and-repair.
You’re not just calming down. You’re changing your biochemistry.
The Research
The science here has gotten genuinely exciting in 2025 and 2026. A meta-analysis published in Nature’s Scientific Reports looked at 12 randomized controlled trials and over 780 participants, and found that breathwork significantly reduced self-reported stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms compared to control groups. A 2026 review in PMC looked specifically at structured breathwork protocols and found medium-to-large effect sizes for stress and anxiety reduction.
Researchers at the University of Sussex found that breathwork can shift activity in the amygdala, the brain’s threat-detection center, in ways that medication and talk therapy address more slowly. And a 2025 neuroscience study showed that specific breathwork practices can trigger dopamine and endorphin release in the brain, which explains the euphoric or deeply peaceful feeling many people describe after an intensive session.
This isn’t fringe wellness anymore. It’s being studied seriously and the results keep holding up.
The Main Types of Breathwork
Diaphragmatic breathing. The foundation. Most of us breathe shallowly, into the chest. Diaphragmatic breathing uses the full capacity of the lungs, expanding the belly on the inhale. It’s the slowest, gentlest form of breathwork and it has the most research behind it. Even five minutes a day of diaphragmatic breathing reduces baseline cortisol levels over time.
Box breathing. Four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out, four counts hold. Used by the military, athletes, and surgeons before high-stress situations. It creates a steady, controlled rhythm that quiets the nervous system quickly. Good for acute anxiety, before a difficult conversation, or in the middle of a panic response.
4-7-8 breathing. Breathe in for four counts, hold for seven, exhale for eight. The long hold and extended exhale create a strong parasympathetic response. Many people use this specifically for sleep. It works.
Physiological sigh. A double inhale through the nose, followed by a long slow exhale through the mouth. Stanford researchers found this to be the single fastest way to reduce physiological arousal in the moment — faster than box breathing, faster than meditation. One physiological sigh can measurably lower your heart rate in under 30 seconds.
Holotropic and transformational breathwork. This is the deep end. Extended sessions of rapid, connected breathing that can produce non-ordinary states of consciousness, emotional releases, visions, or profound somatic experiences. This type of breathwork is often done in a guided group setting and is not what you start with. It’s for people who already have a practice and want to go further.
Breathwork with sound healing. Combining intentional breathing practices with sound frequencies creates something particularly powerful. Your brainwaves are already shifting through the breath pattern, and the sound deepens and amplifies that shift. I’ve been experimenting with weaving these together in my own sessions and the results are something people describe differently than either practice alone.
What to Expect the First Time
If you try a gentle breathwork session, expect to feel calmer than you did before you started. Your hands might tingle slightly from the change in CO2 levels. You might yawn a lot. You might feel a wave of emotion without knowing where it came from. All of this is normal.
If you try a more intensive session, the range of experiences is wider. Physical sensations like tingling or temperature changes are common. Emotional releases are common. Laughing, crying, or simply feeling profound quiet are all possible. The body holds a lot, and breathwork gives it permission to let some of it go.
Drink water before you start. Don’t eat a full meal right before. Have somewhere comfortable to lie down. If you’re pregnant, have a heart condition, or are currently managing severe mental health challenges, check with your doctor first.
How to Start
The barrier to entry with breathwork is genuinely low. You need nothing except five minutes and somewhere to sit or lie down.
Start with three minutes of diaphragmatic breathing, just making sure your belly rises more than your chest, and your exhale is slightly longer than your inhale. Do it every morning before you look at your phone. Do that for two weeks before you add anything else.
I have guided breathwork sessions on YouTube and Instagram that walk you through the technique, the timing, and the transition back to regular breathing. They’re free, quick and you can use them anywhere. That’s where I’d start. youtube.com/peacefulplacewellness
Watch the video in the original post on Substack
You can also access breathwork sessions through Unplug, where 30 days of unlimited content including meditations, breathwork, and sound baths is available free with the code ANGELA30 at team.unplug.app/sign-up/ANGELA30. And my recordings on Insight Timer are available any time: insighttimer.com/Peacefulplacewellness/guided-meditations
One Last Thing
Breathwork has been practiced in one form or another for thousands of years. Pranayama in the yogic tradition, tummo in Tibetan Buddhist practice, various forms of sacred breathing across cultures worldwide. The modern Western interest in breathwork didn’t invent it. It rediscovered it.
Which means when you sit down, close your eyes, and change the way you’re breathing, you’re joining something very old. Something that has helped a lot of people find their way back to themselves.
That’s exactly what your breath has always been for.
Work With Angela
Free sessions on YouTube: This is where Angela is building her library of guided sound baths, meditations, and breathwork you can return to again and again. Before bed, when you’re overwhelmed, when you need ten minutes that are actually yours. Subscribe and it will be waiting for you whenever you need it. youtube.com/peacefulplacewellness
Bring it to your space: Private sound baths and corporate wellness events are Angela’s favorite thing to do. She comes to you, whether that’s your home, your office, a retreat, or an event. If you want to create a memorable evening of sound healing for your team, your family, or yourself, fill out this form and she’ll put something together with you.
Attend a class: Angela teaches sound baths and yoga nidra at a variety of studios across Los Angeles. See the full schedule at angelawrightmusic.com/classes-schedule.
This essay first appeared on my Substack. Subscribe for new writing on sound, rest and the nervous system.
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