Somatic breathing

What is somatic breathing?

“Somatic” means “of the body”, from the Greek sōma. Somatic breathing is breathing with your attention turned inwards, on sensation: the rise of your belly, the weight of your shoulders, the tight spot in your jaw you hadn’t noticed. Most versions also slow the breath down and make the out-breath longer.

It’s a loose term, and teachers use it for quite different things. Some mean a quiet, slow practice like the one below. Others mean intense “somatic breathwork” classes with fast breathing. This page teaches the gentle kind and explains the other.

How do you do somatic breathing?

Sit or lie down. You’re going to notice first and breathe second.

The player gives you 3 minutes at 4 in and 6 out. Keep half your attention on the tide and half on your body.

What is voo breathing?

Voo breathing is a low “voooo” sound made on a long out-breath, like a distant foghorn, so you can feel the vibration in your belly and chest. It comes from Peter Levine, the therapist who developed Somatic Experiencing, a body-based approach to trauma therapy, and it’s become a favourite in somatic classes.

To try it, breathe in gently through your nose. Then let the breath out slowly through your mouth on a deep, open “voooo”, low in pitch, until it trails off naturally. Pause, and wait for the next breath to come by itself. Three to five rounds is enough.

Breathform’s nearest practice is Hum, a soft hum with your lips closed. It’s quieter than voo, if there are people around:

In one small study, humming breaths were linked to higher heart rate variability than rest, which the authors put down to the slow, long out-breath rather than the sound itself (Kim et al. 2026). More in humming bee breath.

What is somatic breathwork?

Usually, it’s a class. Under the same name you’ll find two quite different things:

• Gentle sessions of slow breathing, body awareness, sound and movement, close to what’s on this page.
• Intense sessions of fast, connected breathing (no pause between breaths) for 30 to 60 minutes, often to music, aiming for emotional release.

The intense kind is closer to conscious connected breathing than to a slow breath. Tingling hands, a light head and big feelings are common there, so it’s best done sitting or lying down, with an experienced guide. The gentle kind is simply slow breathing and paying attention. If you’re choosing a class, ask which kind it is. We map both ends in types of breathwork, from gentle to intense.

How is somatic breathing different from other breathwork?

Most breathing exercises lead with a count: box breathing’s four sides, 4-7-8. Somatic breathing leads with attention: what your body feels like right now. The count, if there is one, is there to help you stay with it. What is breathwork? explains the wider field.

Can somatic breathing help anxiety?

Somatic breathing hasn’t been tested as its own technique, but its main ingredient, a slow breath with a long out-breath, has. In one study, 47 younger and older adults did a single 5-minute session of slow breathing with a longer out-breath, and their anxiety was lower afterwards (Magnon et al. 2021). There was no comparison group. In a 12-week trial of 100 adults, anxiety fell with regular slow breathing, whether or not the out-breath was longer (Birdee et al. 2023).

Somatic Experiencing, the trauma therapy that voo comes from, has early, promising results for trauma symptoms, but the studies are of mixed quality (Kuhfuß et al. 2021). That’s therapy with a trained practitioner, not a breathing exercise: if you’re working through trauma, a therapist trained in a body-based approach can guide this with you, at your pace.

So: a gentle way to notice and settle, built on slow breathing, which has the evidence. There’s more on how slow breathing and the body’s rest response fit together in how to calm your nervous system.

How well each breath is studied

• 4-6 breathingWell studied
• Humming bee breathSome evidence

Every study on this page (4)

• Kim et al., 2026: In 24 healthy adults, humming slowed breathing to about six a minute; that pace, not the sound, seemed to affect heart rhythm.
• Magnon et al., 2021: In 47 younger and older adults, anxiety was lower after one five-minute slow-breathing session, though the study had no comparison group.
• Birdee et al., 2023: In 100 healthy adults, anxiety fell over 12 weeks of slow breathing, with no clear difference between longer and equal out-breaths.
• Kuhfuß et al., 2021: A scoping review of 16 studies found preliminary evidence that Somatic Experiencing, a body-oriented trauma therapy, has positive effects on PTSD-related symptoms, with mixed study quality and a need for unbiased randomised trials.

Can I do somatic breathing at home?

Yes. The gentle version needs nothing but a few quiet minutes. Try it:

• At the end of the working day, to notice what the day left in your shoulders.
• In bed, before you sleep.
• After a hard conversation, to let your body catch up.

Start with three minutes, and stop whenever you’d like to.

Questions people ask

Why do I yawn or feel emotional during somatic breathing?

Both are common and nothing to worry about. Yawning often comes as your body settles. Feelings can surface when you slow down and pay attention to your body, sometimes for no obvious reason. Let them come and go, keep the breath gentle and open your eyes if you need to. If strong feelings keep coming up, a therapist can help you work with them.

Is somatic breathing the same as grounding?

They overlap. Grounding puts your attention on contact: your feet on the floor, your back against the chair. Somatic breathing includes that, then widens to everything your body is feeling. Both use a slow breath with a slightly longer out-breath. If you like the contact part best, try grounding breathing, which is built around it.

How often should I do somatic breathing?

A few minutes once or twice a day is plenty. Many people like it at the end of the working day, or in bed before sleep, as a way of noticing what the day left behind in their body. You can also use a shorter version, three slow breaths with your attention on your shoulders and jaw, whenever you notice you’re tense.

Do I need a teacher for somatic breathing?

Not for the gentle version on this page: it’s simply slow breathing with attention on your body. A teacher or class can be helpful if you’d like more structure, and a trained therapist is the right person if you want to work with trauma. For intense somatic breathwork classes, which use fast breathing, choose an experienced facilitator.