Is Breathwork More Effective Than Meditation?

Is breathwork more effective than meditation?

It’s a trick question, and one that reveals significant ignorance. Let’s break it down.

The following came up in my Twitter feed:

As far as I can tell, breathwork is 3x more effective than meditation. After 2 weeks of daily 10m breathing exercises I feel about the same level of benefits (less anxiety, more peace of mind) as 6 weeks of daily 15m meditation.

Let’s break this down by using a different example.

This is like saying

Lifting weights is more effective than doing cardio. After 2 weeks of daily lifting for 30 minutes I feel the same benefits (connected to my body) as after 6 weeks of 45-minute cardio sessions.

It should be obvious in this example that the comparison is misguided.

You can’t compare effectiveness of things that have different purposes.

Cardio and weight-lifting are both essential components of maintaining fitness and overall wellness.

One nice side effect of both is that engaging in these modalities can help us feel more connected within ourselves, but that’s not necessarily the purpose or key benefit of either.

Cardio, or aerobic workouts, and weight lifting also have many of the same or similar benefits.

For example, both can decrease the risk of falls, build endurance, and improve heart function.

Yet most people have been informed enough by now to know that you can’t just pick one over the other.

We need both, in combination with other exercise modalities, as well as sleep and nourishment, to maintain optimal health.

Breathwork and meditation are two of those modalities.

Both may help us feel better in our bodies and minds. We may feel less anxiety and more at peace, or more clear headed.

And many people don’t receive those outcomes from either.

Some forms of breathwork can be agitating. Seated silent meditation can make people feel restless and jittery.

Moreover, feeling less anxious and more peace of mind aren’t really the purpose of either modality.

When you extract components from a system you lose the effectiveness of the system.

The bigger problem here stems from trying to extract two components of a larger system and use them without the whole system.

Breathwork and meditation are both part of the larger system of yoga.

Although many people in the west think of yoga as physical poses, the physical yoga is only one of eight parts of an entire system.

The purpose of the yoga poses is not to stretch; the poses are designed to give us access to the organs so we can use the breath to flush through the body.

Breathwork on its own may serve as a form of meditation. You might find it calming, depending on the type of breathing.

But without setting up the conditions for effective breathing, it won’t serve its actual purpose of nourishing the glands and organs.

Meditation teaches us how to work with the material of the mind. It’s not necessarily designed to bring peace and calm, although it’s a nice side effect.

You can’t optimize or hack your way to optimal wellness by trying to cherry-pick modalities.

Each part in the system serves a distinct purpose. It’s in how they work together as a whole system that delivers optimal benefits.