Breathwork in body psychotherapy: Towards a more unified theory and practice

The use of conscious breathing practices for the purpose of physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing has a long and extremely varied history, yet little work has been done to see if these practices can be brought into a coherent and unified form that contributes to the field of body psychotherapy. This article attempts to meta-analyse the literature and research on breathwork in psychotherapy, with an emphasis on body psychotherapy, and to find common themes so that a general theory of breathwork and guidelines for practice might be developed. This paper provides an overview of the physiology of breathing, a review of the literature on breathwork.