Correct Coherent Breathing®: A Bulletin by Stephen Elliott

A note to future Coherent Breathing researchers: Please employ the Coherent Breathing protocol as designed and defined. I write this as research continues to be performed to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of Coherent Breathing. The study cited below, while using the term Coherent Breathing is simply comparing 2 breathing frequencies and has nothing to do with the Coherent Breathing method or protocol.

Effect of coherent breathing on mental health and wellbeing: a randomised placebo-controlled trial, Scientific Reports, 2023 Dec 13; 13:22141. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-49279-8

For those that either have completed a research study or plan to conduct one, I would like to bring your attention to Chapter 1 of The New Science of Breath, which makes clear that a major aspect of the Coherent Breathing method is “learning to relax” during exhalation. Chapter one goes on to cite 6 anatomical zones that we want to recognize and relax consciously as we go about training Coherent Breathing, with the objective of relaxing freely with every breath, circumstances permitting. Addressing these “bridges” between autonomic and somatic nervous functions is critical to the outcome. They are the face and head, tongue and throat, hands and feet, and the pelvic floor – and the diaphragm itself. We want to learn to release the tension in these zones with each exhalation, letting it all go. This is the point of Coherent Breathing as discovered, designed, and defined and what yields instrumentally verifiable results, a unique feature of Coherent Breathing at the time of its introduction in 2005.

The relatively slow breathing rate establishes the nervous system conditions that allow the body to “let go”, which often does happen to those that employ the protocol of breathing at the nominal rate of 5 breaths per minute for 20 minutes. This release happens automatically at approximately 12 minutes, so the protocol recommends that we practice for 20 minutes so as to allow the elicitation and experience of this automatic relaxation response. As practicers, a goal is to learn to elicit this relaxation response. We’ve written about this phenomenon many times over the last 20 years.

When instrumented with any kind of feedback that allows a window into autonomic status, e.g., galvanic skin response, electromyography, electroencephalography, heart rate variability, blood pressure, we can see this relaxation response with every exhalation. The Coherent Breathing method was designed and defined to take advantage of this physiological fact, that the nervous system operates this way inherently – it swings toward sympathetic emphasis during inhalation and toward parasympathetic emphasis during exhalation. When we learn to generate and synchronize a relaxation response with each exhalation it becomes natural and easy. This understanding is an integral aspect of what one learns when instructed in the wholistic method – not just breathing at a given rate. The objective is to thwart chronic sympathetic bias, what I refer to as the human condition. We achieve this by breathing slowly, deeply, rhythmically, and relaxing during exhalation.

In the past few years, Coherent Breathing is being described “as simply involving a rate of breathing”. This is expressly incorrect and misleading.

steve.elliott@coherence.com