{"id":61377,"date":"2022-08-18T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mindful.org\/?p=61377"},"modified":"2026-04-01T03:17:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:17:24","slug":"what-science-says-about-the-power-of-the-outbreath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindful.org\/what-science-says-about-the-power-of-the-outbreath\/","title":"What Science Says About the Power of the Outbreath","content":{"rendered":"\n

It feels, especially lately, that the world is releasing a emotional sigh. A COVID-weary, climate-anxious, war-distressed sigh.

But a sigh is really just an out-breath, an exhale, the companion to breathing in. \u201cWhen we inhale, it\u2019s a very active process,\u201d says Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang<\/a>, a pulmonary physician, podcast host, and mindfulness teacher who gets to see the process play out in her students. \u201cThe diaphragm actually has to pull itself down and flatten in order for us to invoke an inhaled breath.\u201d The exhalation, on the other hand, is much more passive, and consequently, says Dr. Liang, doesn\u2019t get as much attention. But what\u2019s important, she explains, \u201cis that we can actually control the out-breath<\/a> and harness our own physiology to help exhale out all of our residual breath.\u201d In other words, only when we deeply exhale will we be able to deeply inhale. That out-breath, that sigh, matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A strong outbreath is a chance to connect our thoughts around anxiety or stress or worry and make them real in the breath, with the aim of giving those feelings room to shift, instead of keeping them stuck inside.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

An exasperated out breath, for example, may signal that we\u2019re experiencing stress or processing trauma. Jasmine <\/a>Marie is founder of Black Girls Breathing<\/a>, which aims to create a safe space for Black women to manage their mental health through breathwork and community. She often includes a strong out-breath, \u201ca forced sigh,\u201d as part of the breathwork she teaches. A sigh is how we communicate to others that something\u2019s off or wrong, she says. It\u2019s a chance for those doing the work to acknowledge their thoughts around anxiety or stress or worry and make them real in the breath with the aim to give those feelings room to shift, instead of keeping them stuck inside\u2014a chance \u201cto release what\u2019s no longer serving us,\u201d she says.

A key part of Black Girls Breathing is addressing trauma, says Marie. \u201cIndividual trauma, collective trauma, generational trauma\u2026\u201d Using breathwork to process trauma is like cleaning out our closets. We go in and get rid of a bunch of stuff, and then, the next time we go in we discover there\u2019s still more to get rid of.

\u201cIt\u2019s like a constant reminder that this is a process,\u201d she says. \u201cBreathwork is a tool to help us navigate the hard things in life.\u201d

Yet, in times of stress<\/a> or anxiety<\/a>, our body often does the opposite of what\u2019s helpful. Instead of deep, slow breaths, our breathing quickens, becoming more shallow, which helps short-term when our options are to fight or flee. It\u2019s a response that might have served when there was a literal tiger at our door, but it doesn\u2019t serve us when our stress is caused by an overdue work project or a pandemic or nothing we can exactly put our finger on. What can an exhale teach us about that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your Outbreath and Your Brain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

James Nestor, a science journalist and author of the book Breath<\/em>, says that breathing is one of those things that most of us (including experts in the science of breathing) don\u2019t really think about until there\u2019s something wrong. \u201cIt\u2019s shocking to me that we can prove how breathing affects us either in good ways or bad ways; you can feel it in the first few seconds of breathing in a healthy way, you can see it in studies done of people who have changed their breathing and dramatically improved their health,\u201d he says. And yet…most of us don\u2019t think about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jose L. Herrero-Rubio isn\u2019t most people. A childhood asthma sufferer, and now assistant professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Herrero-Rubio has carefully studied the interactions between physiology and brain functions: what\u2019s happening in our body and our brain, both when we\u2019re breathing mindfully and when we\u2019re stressed. Thanks to his research, we\u2019ve learned that there is much communication between the brain stem\u2014which is responsible for stuff that keeps us alive, like respiration\u2014and the sub-cortical areas of the brain, which help with higher-order thinking. When we breathe, explains Dr. Herrero-Rubio, the somatosensory cortex, a brain region that processes sensations of touch, detects that we have inhaled, and tells the brain region associated with movement, the motor cortex, that it\u2019s time to stop inhaling and start exhaling. \u201cThey have to be sending each other neural copies,\u201d he explains, \u201cupdating each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This relationship between our brain\u2019s movement and touch areas and the communication they send shapes how we breathe and when we inhale and exhale. \u201cPeople who constantly feel breathless might have abnormal communication between these cortical circuits,\u201d says Dr. Herrero-Rubio. For instance, if the touch region does not update the movement region sufficiently, such as when CO2 levels are rising quickly during exercise, then your rate of respiration won\u2019t increase. Conversely, if the movement region is too sensitive to tiny fluctuations in CO2\u2014such as with asthmatic people or those with chronic anxiety\u2014then it might constantly update its communication, leading to hyperventilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even people with \u201cnormal\u201d communication within these cortical circuits can find that, when we\u2019re stressed, the areas of the brain that are much older, more involved in our fight-or-flight response, such as the amygdala, come online. So these two areas that have been communicating quite effectively\u2014the somatosensory, or touch, cortex and the motor, or movement, cortex\u2014are suddenly being interrupted by the amygdala. The result, says Dr. Herrero-Rubio, is \u201cnoise.\u201d Or, put another way, it\u2019s as if a panicked person has crashed your super-chill breathing party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Mindful Exhale<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is where mindfulness comes in, says Dr. Liang. It allows us to notice when our body is responding automatically to stress and gives us the opportunity to pause and choose our response<\/a>. In short, we can hack our brains to bypass or shortcut the stress response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are unique connections between the lungs and the vagus nerve…responsible for the para-sympathetic nervous system,\u201d says Dr. Liang, which she describes as the \u201cresting and digesting\u201d nervous system. When we pay attention to our breath, when we take a deeper inhale and an extended exhale, this rest-and-digest system can override our fight-or-flight system, sending the message to parts of the body readying stress defenses that all is, in fact, fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She explains, \u201cYou can take advantage of your physiology and prolong your exhale…even two to four times longer than the inhale, and you exhale through pursed lips, as if you are blowing out birthday candles. That actually can help you stent open your airways for longer to allow the exhale breath to complete itself in a more comprehensive way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It boils down to simple math. If you want to be able to take a larger inhale, then you need to have completely exhaled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The respiratory pattern of people who\u2019ve been practicing meditation for a long time is \u201cvery different\u201d compared to other people, says Jose L. Herrero-Rubio. \u201cThe breathing rate is much lower, the exhalation is more pronounced, the inhalation\/exhalation ratio is much lower because they spend more time exhaling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By using the outbreath to expel what we no longer want, we are then better able to welcome something new.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Breathwork is not a panacea, says Dr. Liang. But regular practice will help us better address stress and anxiety. She points out too that while \u201cmindful breathing can include breathwork and breathwork can include mindfulness,\u201d the two are not identical. \u201cBreathwork refers to voluntary control of the breath, usually to achieve a desired goal such as a decrease in shortness of breath or reduction of anxiety, for instance,\u201d she explains\u2014goals that may involve extending the out-breath. Mindful breathing, on the other hand, \u201cis any type of breathing that you apply mindfulness to, which includes when one is simply noticing breath without trying to change it.\u201d By using our out-breath to expel what we no longer want, as Jasmine Marie puts it, we are then better able to welcome something new.

A sigh, after all, is an out-breath with a story attached to it. By expelling it, we make space for a new one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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