Breath of fire

How to do it

1. Sit upright on a chair or the floor and close your mouth. Never do it standing. Rest a hand on your navel if you want to feel the movement.
2. Start breathing through your nose at an even pace: half a second in, half a second out, with no pause between them. On the exhale your navel draws toward your spine. On the inhale your belly releases.
3. Keep that up for 40 breaths, which is 40 seconds. Your chest stays quiet and your face stays relaxed.
4. Recover with 3 slow breaths: in through the nose for 5 seconds, out through the nose for 5 seconds.
5. Repeat the 40 breaths and the recovery two more times, for three rounds.
6. Finish with the last recovery, breathe at your own pace for a minute, and only then get up.

What breath of fire is

It's a short, rhythmic breath where the inhale and the exhale are the same length and follow each other without a gap. The engine is the middle of your body: the navel and the area just under the ribs pull in as the air leaves and let go as it comes back. It sounds like soft panting through the nose.

Symmetry and continuity are what set it apart from its two relatives. Kapalabhati is lopsided: a sharp exhale and a passive inhale. Bellows breath, or bhastrika, pushes hard in both directions and ends in a hold. Breath of fire is lighter than bellows breath and doesn't stop until the set is over. Plenty of classes, and even some medical articles, use the three names as if they were one. They aren't.

Where it comes from

The name and the form taught today come from the Kundalini Yoga of Yogi Bhajan (Harbhajan Singh Puri), who brought his teachings to the United States in the late 1960s and founded the organization 3HO. That organization describes it this way: equal on the inhale and the exhale, no pause, through the nose, powered from the navel and solar plexus, at roughly two to three cycles per second.

Further back, the trail gets murky. In 2012 the scholar Philip Deslippe argued that Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga was not an ancient practice handed down intact but a combination of techniques learned from two 20th-century teachers, Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari and Maharaj Virsa Singh. The classical hatha yoga manuals describe fast breathing under other names, bhastrika and kapalabhati, but we didn't find this exact form or this name in them.

What people use it for

Inside Kundalini Yoga it rarely stands alone: it runs under poses and sequences and sets the tempo of a class. Outside of it, some people use a few minutes in the morning or mid-afternoon, when the body wants to move and can't.

People who practice it tend to describe heat in the belly and feeling more awake afterward. Those are experiences, not demonstrated effects.

What the research says

There's very little research on breath of fire itself. A 2004 study in the International Journal of Cardiology recorded the hearts of 10 experienced meditators during three practices. Two of them, both slow, produced large swings in heart rate that were coupled to the breath. Breath of fire did the opposite: it raised average heart rate and weakened that coupling. It's a small study, and it describes what happens during the practice, not any benefit afterward.

The rest has to be borrowed from its cousin, kapalabhati. A 2015 study of 47 trained men measured oxygen use 34.6% higher during practice, along with a 25 to 29% drop in estimated blood carbon dioxide. In other words, the body works harder and hyperventilates at the same time.

On risk, a 2004 report in the journal Chest describes a healthy 29-year-old woman who had a spontaneous collapsed lung after practicing a fast yoga breath the article calls both kapalabhati and breath of fire. The authors note it's the only known case. One case doesn't tell you how often something happens, but it's a reminder that forcing has a cost.

What it feels like and what to notice

At first the coordination is the hard part: the belly moves backward or the rhythm falls apart. Slow down until the movement comes out even.

Each breath is small, but forty in a row move more air than a resting body needs. That lowers carbon dioxide in the blood, and low carbon dioxide brings the hyperventilation symptoms MedlinePlus lists: lightheadedness, dizziness, tingling in the arms or around the mouth, a pounding heart. 3HO's own instructions say to ease off the breath if you get dizzy.

That's the job of the three slow breaths between rounds: they give carbon dioxide time to come back up. If the tingling or dizziness doesn't settle during the recovery, the session is over. Chest pain, trouble breathing or intense fear are reasons to stop and, if they don't pass, to get help.

Variations

• Gentler: a single round of twenty breaths, followed by the recovery. This is how to start.
• Slower: one breath every two seconds, until your belly learns the movement.
• Traditional Kundalini Yoga pace: 3HO describes two to three cycles per second, for anywhere from 1 to 31 minutes. That's much faster and longer than this guide, and it's for people practicing with a teacher.
• More recovery: if three slow breaths aren't enough, take six before the next round.

Common mistakes

• Mixing it up with kapalabhati. If you're only pushing on the exhale, you're doing a different practice. Here both halves carry equal weight.
• Breathing with your chest and shoulders. The movement is short and comes from the navel up. Your shoulders stay out of it.
• Making it big. This isn't deep breathing done in a hurry. It's small and light.
• Skipping the recovery. The slow breaths are part of the practice, not a break from it.
• Pushing through dizziness. Toughing it out earns you nothing. Stopping in time does.

How often and how long

The three rounds here add up to two minutes of fast breathing and a minute and a half of recovery. That's a cautious amount for practicing alone. There's no research-backed dose.

Once a day is plenty, ideally away from meals and not right before bed. The 3HO tradition also says to skip it during pregnancy and in the first days of your period. If you're having an off day, trade it for a slow breath.

Before you start

• Always sitting, with your back upright. Never standing.
• Never in or near water. Never while driving.
• If you get dizzy, tingly, short of breath or feel your heart pounding, stop and breathe normally until it passes.
• Ask a health professional first if you're pregnant, or have a heart, lung or blood pressure condition, epilepsy, a hernia or recent abdominal surgery, or a history of fainting or panic attacks.
• This is a practice for adults. Don't make it longer or faster on your own.