Managing anxiety and PTSD with breathing interventions and HRV biofeedback

‘But what does science say?’ It’s a question we ask ourselves at moonbird every day. Especially our postdoctoral researcher, Elisabeth Honinx, as it’s her focus to investigate and gather scientific grounding for everything that we do at moonbird.

Elisabeth continuously assembles the most interesting studies on breathing and related topics. Here, we’d like to give you a monthly overview of the latest research, news, and developments in the World of Breathing. Be inspired.

The positive effects of breathing interventions for anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental disorders out there. Yet, they are often not recognized and treated properly, especially in primary care settings.

Anxiety disorders are often associated with dysfunctional breathing. That's where breathing exercises come in - they aim to improve breathing and, in turn, help alleviate anxiety symptoms. A group of researchers conducted a study to investigate just how effective breathwork interventions are for adults with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders (according to the DSM-5 classification system, if you're curious). To do so, they searched through a large database of studies and found 16 studies that fit their criteria.

And guess what? The results were pretty promising! A variety of breathwork interventions actually led to significant improvements in anxiety symptoms in patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders.

Breathing exercises lead to significant improvements in anxiety symptoms

Overall, this evidence-based review shows that breathwork interventions can be very helpful for people with anxiety disorders. Although they found different effective breathing exercises and techniques can be used, all studies agreed that conscious breathing has a great impact on the parasympathetic (rest and recovery) nervous system.

Source: Brain Sci.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/2/256