Breath Training for Asthma: A Science-Backed Success Story

Dear Yogis,

I recently wrapped up a private training program with a woman battling severe asthma. For years, her condition had slowly chipped away at her daily life. Walks with her husband left her winded. Volunteer shifts felt overwhelming. Gardening—a once-joyful ritual—had become physically uncomfortable. Despite years on medication, including steroids and inhalers, her symptoms remained in control only to a point. So, she turned to breath training.

Asthma is one of the most common issues I work with. At its core, asthma is chronic inflammation and narrowing of the airways. It shows up as tightness in the chest, wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath. In other words, it's not just a lung problem—it's a space problem. The airways aren’t open enough, and the body reacts in panic.

Breath training, especially when informed by the Buteyko Method, offers an alternative approach grounded in retraining the body’s breathing patterns. Developed by Ukrainian physician Dr. Konstantin Buteyko in the 1950s, the method centers on calming the breath, increasing carbon dioxide (CO₂) tolerance, and using breath holds to trigger physiological adaptations.

Why does this matter?

Because CO₂ isn’t just a waste gas—it’s actually critical for optimal oxygen delivery. Higher CO₂ levels help dilate the airways and blood vessels, easing the transfer of oxygen into the bloodstream. Breath-holding exercises, paired with nasal breathing and reduced breathing volume, help teach the respiratory system to relax instead of constrict.

In parallel, we focus on strengthening the diaphragm, the primary breathing muscle. When the diaphragm is weak, the body over-relies on upper chest muscles to breathe, which is inefficient and often triggers stress responses. Through regular training—short, focused breathing sessions several times a day—we rebuild a foundation of slow, deep, effortless breath. That’s the real goal: to make functional breathing the default, not the exception.

Back to my client. She showed up. Fully. She committed to the daily practice—even when she caught a nasty cold halfway through the program. Rather than derailing her progress, that challenge became a proving ground. Her system was resilient enough to hold the gains she’d made.

By the end of our four months together, she was off her inhalers. No daily meds. No wheezing. Her breathing had transformed. She could stroll alongside her husband, volunteer with energy, and tend her garden in peace.

As Lauryn Hill said, “People work hard to make it look easy.” Breathwork is no exception. What seems natural often takes practice and patience. But once you wake up to your breath—once you train it—you unlock something powerful: choice. Ease. Energy.

Breath becomes the lever you pull to shift your body out of struggle and into flow.

Breathe Easy,
Tiger