What is Vase Breathing?

2008

Finding: In this randomised trial, 183 adults with asthma in primary care were assigned to either breathing training or standard asthma education, then followed for six months. Those who learned breathing techniques reported better asthma-related quality of life and lower anxiety and depression scores than the education group, though their actual lung function, airway inflammation, and airway sensitivity stayed the same. For someone with asthma, this suggests breathing practice may help you feel calmer and cope better day to day, but it works on how you feel rather than on the underlying condition, so it is not a substitute for prescribed medication or medical care.

n = 200

Finding: In a three-week trial with 200 healthy young adults, a remotely delivered breathwork routine that combines rapid breathing with breath holds was compared against a closely matched comparison practice. Both groups reported feeling less stressed, anxious and low over time, but the retention-based breathing was no better than the comparison at improving stress, mood, wellbeing or sleep, and it was well tolerated throughout. For someone considering this style of practice, that means it appears safe to try and people did feel better, though the benefit here looks like it comes from the act of practising rather than anything unique to the breath-hold technique. Worth noting: this trial tested a general high-ventilation-with-retention protocol in young, healthy adults over a short window, not vase breathing on its own, so it can't confirm technique-specific effects.

2023

Finding: This systematic review gathered clinical trials that tested slow, controlled breathing practices as a standalone way to ease stress and anxiety, the same family of techniques that vase breathing belongs to. Two reviewers independently sorted through the published trials to see which breathing approaches were studied and how they were put into practice, so the value here is a broad map of the evidence rather than a single measured result. For someone considering vase breathing, it points to regulated breathing as a widely researched, low-cost tool worth trying, while noting that this review looked at breathing practices as a group and did not isolate the effects of any one method on its own.

2025

Finding: This review maps out a theory rather than testing it on people: it explains how slow, controlled breathing and the rhythmic rise and fall of carbon dioxide it produces could set off gentle pulsing in the brain's blood vessels and help move the fluid that bathes the brain. For a breath-holding practice like vase breathing, where CO2 naturally builds up during retention, that offers a plausible reason why the technique might influence blood flow and fluid movement inside the skull. Keep in mind this is a proposed mechanism, not a measured result, so it does not show that vase breathing clears waste from the brain or delivers any clinical benefit; it simply outlines a pathway that future studies would need to test directly.

n = 785

Finding: Pooling trials of breathwork as a whole, this meta-analysis found that people who practised breathing techniques reported lower stress than those who did not, with a small-to-moderate effect drawn from 12 randomised trials and 785 adults; anxiety and low mood eased by a similar margin across the wider set of studies. For someone drawn to vase breathing, that offers reason for cautious optimism about the broader family of breath practices it belongs to. It is worth being clear, though, that none of these trials tested vase breathing itself, and the studies varied in quality, so this points to the promise of breathwork generally rather than proof that this specific retention technique works.

2023

Finding: This neuroscience review traces how the rhythm of breathing, and especially the moment you switch between breathing in and breathing out, lines up with brain networks tied to attention, thinking and emotional state. In plain terms, when and how you breathe appears to shape the same circuits that govern focus and how you handle stress, which offers a plausible reason why deliberately slowing and shaping the breath, as in Vase Breathing, might steady the mind. Keep in mind this is a review of how the brain and breath connect rather than a trial of Vase Breathing itself, so it points to a mechanism rather than proving a specific benefit of this technique.

2017

Finding: In a controlled trial with 40 healthy adults, eight weeks of very slow breathing, around four breaths a minute across 20 sessions, lowered levels of the stress hormone cortisol, eased negative mood, and sharpened people's ability to stay focused compared with a group that didn't practise. For anyone drawn to Vase Breathing, this hints that slowing the breath itself can steady the nervous system and clear the mind, though the study looked at plain slow diaphragmatic breathing rather than the breath-holding and internal-lock techniques specific to this practice. It was also a small, short study that reported the direction of these changes without a precise measure of how large they were, so treat it as an encouraging signal about slow breathing generally rather than proof about Vase Breathing itself.

n = 29

Finding: In a small trial with 29 people living with inflammatory bowel disease, a 26-week program combining breathing, gentle movement and meditation eased anxiety and depression, raised quality-of-life scores, and lowered C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation in the body, compared with those who attended an educational seminar instead. For someone drawn to breath-based practice, this hints that pairing breathing with movement and meditation may support both mood and physical symptoms over several months. Keep the scope in mind, though: the study was small, and because it bundled several practices together it can't isolate what breathing alone did, so these results reflect the full program rather than vase breathing on its own.