Breathwork for Anxiety: When Meditation and Therapy Weren’t Enough

Breathwork for anxiety works for me where meditation and therapy fall short, because it lets me move stress through and out of my body instead of only getting comfortable with it and letting it pass.

Right around story time, my little one grinds his teeth about two inches from my ear. After an overwhelming day or a tough evening, I could feel my nervous system activating. My face would get hot. My chest would tighten. I had an urge to crawl out of my skin.

I would stay calm, letting the sensations pass, knowing this is a small thing and that if I focused on the story, I wouldn’t notice it anymore. My mindfulness got me there.

But even though I had done the work, had a meditation practice that brought me more peace than anything else in my life, and had worked through the hardest pieces with therapy, my body still tensed up and reacted to the grinding (and to many other small things).

Why Didn’t Meditation and Therapy Fix My Anxiety?

Meditation and therapy are top-down approaches. They help us understand our thoughts, question them, and let them go. Mindfulness helps us stay present, which gives us more compassion and ease. But they don’t give our bodies a way to release the stress.

I had been thinking my way out of stress, anxiety, and irritability. But my body was holding it in. Every time my nervous system got activated (the kids bickering, running late, almost everything after 7:30pm), I felt it physically.

A Big Aha! Moment

You know those blogger bundles that show up in your inbox every so often? I stopped buying them years ago because I never took the courses. (They’re so alluring, though.)

Before I stopped, I bought one with a course on manifestation through breathwork. And I finished it! The habit of using breath to manifest never stuck, but I noticed I felt different. More at ease. Lighter.

Within a few weeks I made the connection. I could feel what breathwork was doing for me, physically. My hands and feet tingling, the stress of the breath holds pushing me, and then the lightness when it was over. The tightness I’d carried in my chest loosened in minutes. Meditation had never reached it that fast, or that well.

What was breathwork giving me that meditation wasn’t?

What’s the Difference Between Breathwork and Meditation for Anxiety?

I love meditation. It gets me out of my head, quiets the chatter, and eliminates the spirals. It creates space for stillness and helps me respond instead of reacting. With meditation, I can pinpoint where I feel the stress and stay present with it. It has given me the clarity of understanding that my thoughts aren’t always true, my feelings are fleeting, and I can sit with it all in peace.

But breathwork hits differently.

It helps me move that same stress, those same feelings, through and out of my body.

Meditation gives me awareness. Breathwork gives me release.

It’s not just me. A 2023 randomized study from Stanford researchers found that people who did five minutes of daily breathwork for a month improved their mood more, and lowered their breathing rate more, than people who did five minutes of mindfulness meditation. (Balban et al., Cell Reports Medicine)

Our Bodies Hold On to So Much

Around this time, I became aware of somatics, or working with the body to change how we feel.

And even as I started learning more, I was a firm believer in top-down strategies. But my body was storing everything. Every moment of overwhelm, every time I swallowed frustration to stay “calm,” every time I pushed through while already depleted.

I thought I was managing it by thinking about it differently (a top-down approach). But I was piling stress on top of stress and trying to convince myself I was fine while my nervous system screamed otherwise.

Breathwork gave me a way to process what I was carrying physically. Not just acknowledge it. Not just reframe it. Move it out (a bottom-up approach).

My body often knows I’m stressed before I do. My jaw clenches. My chest gets that familiar tightness. I’ve been hit by waves of nausea and light-headedness before I even felt grief. Breathwork taught me to notice those signals and respond before they take over.

Where Is This Taking Me?

Down a rabbit hole of breathwork techniques, to put it mildly. Some for calm, some for energy, some for releasing stuck emotions. Many for widening my window of tolerance so I can stay calm when it matters (morning carpool, when three boys are punching each other in the backseat, for example).

Breath is the one thing we can control that influences the things we can’t: our heart rate, our stress response, our sweat. It’s the easiest, cheapest tool I know for working with anger, anxiety, and impatience.

Breathwork won’t make whining or the shoes-won’t-go-on standoff any less frustrating. But in my experience it raises my tolerance for that frustration, even on days I’m not practicing. The breathwork I do in the morning shows up in the afternoon. By purposefully pushing our bodies and giving them a bit of intentional, controlled stress, we increase our ability to handle the stress that’s put on us later.

For me, this has been everything.

When bedtime rolls around and the grinding (or coughing, or fidgeting, or…) starts, my body tells me before my brain does. I feel the jaw clench, I notice, and I use my breath to release it.

If you’ve been doing all the right things and your body still hasn’t caught up, I’d love for you to join me for a free live training called The Reason You Yell at Your Kids. We’ll go into the biology of it and a few breathwork practices you can use mid-chaos.

If you want the bigger picture of why our nervous systems react this way, I wrote about it in why we yell at our kids. And if you want to see how I use breathwork in everyday parenting moments, start with Using Breathwork to Transform Your Parenting.

Have you tried breathwork, or are you still in the “meditation and therapy should be enough” camp like I was? Tell me in the comments.

Common Questions About Breathwork for Anxiety

Does breathwork help with anxiety?

For me, yes. It moved the physical stress that meditation and therapy didn’t reach, often within minutes. Research on breathwork and mood is promising, but it isn’t a cure-all.

How long does it take to feel a difference?

I felt a shift in my chest within a few weeks of starting, and sometimes within minutes during a single session. Everyone’s body is different.

Can breathwork replace therapy or meditation?

It didn’t for me. It’s one more tool alongside them. If anxiety is making daily life hard, please talk with your doctor or therapist.

Is breathwork safe for everyone?

Gentler practices like slow, even breathing are widely used, but some intense styles aren’t right for everyone. Check with your doctor first if you have a health condition or are pregnant.