Pranayama and Breathwork: ancient science, modern language

Breathing is something we do about 20,000 times a day, mostly without noticing.

Yet within this simple, rhythmic action lives one of the most powerful tools we have for regulating the nervous system, supporting health, and cultivating awareness.

In recent years, the word breathwork has become popular, while yogic traditions have long spoken of pranayama. People often ask:

Are they the same thing? What’s the difference?

The honest answer is that they work with the same human physiology, but arise from different historical and cultural contexts. And often use different language to describe very similar effects.

A man practices calming breathwork at sunrise, surrounded by soft mist and warm golden light.

What does “Pranayama” actually mean?

Pranayama comes from Sanskrit:

Prāṇa – vital energy, life force, that which animates living beings

Āyāma – expansion, extension, or regulation

So pranayama is not simply “breathing exercises”. It is the conscious regulation of the breath in order to influence the flow of prāṇa throughout the system.

Classical yoga texts describe pranayama in detail, including the Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Gheranda Samhita, and many others. These writings place breath practices within a larger path of transformation, alongside ethics, posture, concentration, and meditation.

In many traditions, pranayama is practised specifically to prepare the body and mind for dhyāna (meditation): steadying the nervous system, refining attention, and quieting mental fluctuations.

Yogis were studying the Nervous System before we had the words

Through centuries of careful self-observation, yogic practitioners noticed that specific breathing patterns reliably produced specific effects:

• a longer, slower exhale reduced agitation

• alternate nostril breathing balanced mental states

• rhythmic, forceful breathing increased heat and alertness

• gentle breath retention steadied the heart and attention

Today, we describe these responses in terms of:

• autonomic nervous system regulation

• parasympathetic and sympathetic activity

• heart rate variability

• chemoreceptor sensitivity

• vagal tone

Ancient yoga described the same territory through the language of prāṇa, nāḍīs, and mental fluctuations.

Different vocabulary. Same living physiology.

Breath: the only door we can touch

Breathing holds a unique position in the body. It is both:

autonomic – happening without conscious effort

voluntary – something we can deliberately change

You cannot directly command your heart rate, blood pressure, or hormone secretion but change your breathing pattern and all of these systems begin to respond.

This is why pranayama is central to yoga therapy and modern clinical breathing approaches alike: it offers a direct pathway into the nervous system.

Through the breath we influence:

• emotional regulation

• stress recovery

• focus and cognitive clarity

• sleep and digestion

• physical energy and fatigue

It is also how we meet the world. Every inhale brings the outer environment inside. Every exhale returns us to our internal landscape.

How Many Types of Pranayama Exist?

There is no single universal list. Classical texts describe around eight to fifteen core pranayama families (depending on the source) with countless variations based on:

• inhale–exhale ratios

• breath retention and suspension (kumbhaka, after inhale or exhale)

• nostril patterns

• sound

• muscular engagement (bandhas)

• speed and rhythm

Most modern yoga teachers draw from these classical families and adapt them for contemporary bodies and therapeutic contexts. In this way, pranayama itself has always been dynamic and responsive, not fixed.

What do we mean by “Breathwork” today?

Breathwork is a modern umbrella term that includes many different methods developed across psychology, medicine, performance science, and somatic therapy.

There is no single breathwork system. Better saying, it has dozens of schools and hundreds of techniques.

You may hear about approaches such as:

• Wim Hof–style training

• Buteyko or Oxygen Advantage methods

• coherent or resonant breathing

• holotropic-style sessions

• trauma-informed breath practices

• somatic breathwork

• military or athletic protocols

Some are gentle and restorative. Others are intense and cathartic. Some focus on health conditions, others on emotional processing or performance optimisation.

What unites them is the same principle yogis explored centuries ago: change the breathing pattern, and the nervous system changes.

So what’s the real difference?

Rather than asking whether pranayama or breathwork is more therapeutic or more scientific, a better question might be:

What is the intention and context of the practice?

Breathwork often asks:

How can breathing regulate my nervous system and support wellbeing?

Pranayama asks the same, and then goes one step further, because in yoga it often prepares the practitioner for meditation:

How can this regulated system become a doorway to awareness?

Therapy and consciousness are not separate. One prepares the ground for the other.

In many yoga traditions, the calming and energising effects of pranayama are not the final goal, but the foundation for deeper inquiry into perception, identity, and stillness.

From this perspective, pranayama is not less scientific than modern breathwork. It is an ancient empirical discipline, developed through careful experimentation within the human body.

Modern research now provides different explanations for what yogic practitioners already knew through experience: that the breath is one of the most powerful levers we have for shaping our internal state.

Breathwork is a contemporary language for this discovery. Pranayama is its ancestral root.

A personal note on my approach

In my teaching, I honour both. I respect the yogic texts and the lineage of pranayama, while speaking to modern lives shaped by stress, speed, and nervous-system overload.

Whether we practise alternate nostril breathing, slow coherent rhythms, or simple awareness of inhale and exhale, the essence remains the same: to use the breath as a doorway back to balance, clarity, and presence.

Different maps. Same territory. One breath.

Try at home

If you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or in need of slowing down, try this breathing practice. Stay with it for a few minutes and observe what begins to shift within.

4-7-8 breathing