You can change your brain state in three minutes depending on which nostril you breathe through.
Now that may sound a little bit weird, but let me explain a lot of the science behind this.
We have known for thousands of years that multiple traditions around the world have noticed that breathing through one nostril or the other appears to change your state.
You see this a lot in the yogic traditions. And over the years, researchers got interested in this and they said, is it really possible? Is there something neurophysiologically plausible that would explain why breathing through my right nostril would create a different result in the body than breathing through my left nostril?
Now what happened in all of that is that some early research was done and ultimately what they decided in the early research was that breathing through your right nostril only would induce sympathetic activity in the body.
Because some of the early studies, what they found is that if you’re breathing through the right nostril, your heart rate would go up, your skin conductance, which is one of the things we test or measure to look at sympathetic activity would also increase.
Conversely, what they found is that breathing through the left nostril seemed to have the opposite effect where it became parasympathetic in nature. Your heart rate would go down. Eventually you might see some changes in your heart rate variability.
So basically for a long time, the yogic traditions of right nostril for activation, left nostril for recovery seemed to mesh perfectly with the research. And as a result of that, a lot of us have been teaching that for years, including me, because that’s what the research papers talked about.
But things have changed.
And so what I want to do today is I’m going to give you kind of the latest, if I can, scientific approach to utilizing nostril breathing and alternate nostril breathing in a way that resonates not only with what we already teach in Z-Health, but what we see in the emerging literature.
This is really powerful stuff. So stick with me.
Now, if you are a doctor, a therapist, a coach of any kind, you teach movement and you’re interested in bridging the gap between what you currently do and kind of modern neuroscientific approaches, we would love to chat with you. You can go to the pinned comment and you can see there how to get in touch with us.
Now, with that said, let’s talk about kind of the current state of the nostril breathing research.
What we know now, based off a 2025 study, is that there is more variability in this than the early studies indicated and than many of the traditional approaches indicated.
In 2025, it was actually a pretty rigorously designed study that was done and it found the opposite effect. So instead of finding the right side was sympathetic in nature and the left side was parasympathetic, they found the opposite, where breathing through the right nostril actually calmed people down and decreased their heart rate.
So that started to kind of throw a monkey wrench into things.
And then some further studies were done looking at, number one, EEGs, some brain scans while people were breathing through one nostril or the other.
And what the EEG studies did confirm is, again, what we see from the yogic traditions and from the early studies, which is that there is definitely an asymmetric impact on the brain depending upon which nostril you breathe through.
And if you know anything about neuroanatomy, that should make sense because we have olfactory bulbs and we have different pathways by which the information from the nose goes to the brain. So the asymmetry was proven.
However, in that same EEG study, what they found was nothing really reaching statistical significance with regards to changes in heart rate variability, heart rate, sympathetic and parasympathetic activity.
So now we have a pretty good study that says, actually, we found the reverse of what everyone’s been saying.
And then we found another study that says, hey, when we look at brain scans, definitely it’s asymmetric. Breathing through the right nostril and left nostril change the brain in different ways.
But then they had a lack of consistency in terms of the overall sympathetic and parasympathetic responses getting more complicated.
And then there was another study in 2024. It was a pilot study. And what they found was that breathing through the right nostril versus left nostril kind of did the same thing, in that the right nostril actually tended to calm the sympathetic nervous system and the left nostril actually made it easier for people to focus.
Now, there are confusing aspects in all of this because it depends on what the researchers were studying, what they were looking for.
But ultimately, what has come out of all of this, if we kind of synthesize the yogic traditions with the earlier research studies, with the most current research studies, here’s what we know for sure.
Breathing through one nostril or the other is not binary, meaning it’s not always right side sympathetic, left side parasympathetic. It is variable, and that is probably somewhat state dependent on the individual.
But what we do know is that breathing through one nostril changes brain activity, and breathing through the right nostril changes brain activity in a way that breathing through the left nostril does not, and vice versa.
So is there anything practical that we can take away from this? Yeah, because we can look at further studies.
The most consistently studied aspect of nostril breathing is called alternate nostril breathing, in which I would inhale through my left nostril, switch, exhale through my right, inhale through my right, switch, exhale through my left.
So basically I’m switching which nostril I’m breathing through on each exhale.
Multiple studies have confirmed that a regular practice of alternate nostril breathing does some really cool things.
Number one, it lowers blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic.
Another thing that it does is it can decrease anxiety, actually quite significantly.
Now, whenever you’re getting into the anxiety world with alternate nostril breathing, you’re talking about having to practice this about 15 minutes, two times a day.
We have also seen alternate nostril breathing show up in some research that it improves reaction times, and so there’s a cognitive impact of it.
So whenever we kind of look at the overall picture, what we know at this point is that the most conclusive aspect of alternate nostril breathing is whenever we do the traditional practice of spending three to 15 minutes, once or twice a day, practicing exactly what I demonstrated, where I’m blocking one nostril, inhaling, blocking the other, exhaling, inhaling, blocking, exhaling, right?
And I just do that repetitively.
That, as I said right now, it can improve your HIV, it can change your heart rate, it can change your blood pressure.
And like I said, it has some pretty notable effects on anxiety, mood, and even reaction time.
So if you are interested in alternate nostril breathing or nostril breathing and kind of its impacts, the easiest place to start with this from a research perspective is exactly what I’m talking about.
Start building a practice of just traditional alternate nostril breathing and watch the effects.
Now, if you want to take it a step further, now we start to talk about individual variability, which for Z-Health is a big deal because it’s what we’ve been preaching for 20 plus years, because whenever you study brains and you understand how neurology works, you start to recognize that every intervention, every exercise, anything that anyone does needs to be individualized to them because their response is going to be based off the overall picture of the world that their nervous system is carrying.
So if you want to try this, here’s the other thing I would recommend.
We have seen great success with the old version, the stuff that we’ve been teaching for a long time, which is inhaling and exhaling only through the right nostril tends to, for many people, increase sympathetic activity.
In other words, it kind of wakes you up.
It energizes you.
So if you have something coming up, let’s say you’ve got to do a presentation, you got to shoot some YouTube videos, you’ve got to do something where you need to be more aware, or you’re going to go do a workout and you’re really dragging.
Set a timer for three to five minutes and just breathe through your right nostril.
Slow in, slow out, slow in, slow out for three to five minutes and notice what happens to your energy level.
If for you, you go, hey, yeah, I’m starting to feel a little bit better.
I’m starting to feel more energized.
Then you may fit into that bigger bucket of the population for whom right nostril breathing tends to activate the sympathetic nervous system.
Conversely, if you spend three to five minutes and you’re doing this to prep for a workout and instead you go take a nap, you may fit into that other bucket of people who have an altered impact from it based on the earlier research.
So I would recommend that you start off testing right nostril because I have found again experientially with people that that is often easier to identify in your own body.
Like, okay, five minutes in, yeah, I feel pretty good.
However, you can also test the inverse.
Let’s say you’re having a very stressful day, you get to take a little bit of a lunch break, you’re off your computer, close your right nostril and spend three to five minutes breathing through your left nostril.
And again, notice what it does to your mental, emotional, and physical state.
Does it relax you?
Or does it make you more alert?
Very quickly, typically within two or three training sessions, you will be able to personalize this for yourself.
You will be able to identify whether or not right nostril breathing activates you or relaxes you, if left nostril breathing activates or relaxes you, and the impact of alternate nostril breathing.
So ultimately, what I really want you to understand is that the science is confirming what was taught thousands of years ago, kind of.
It’s just in the world, it’s a little bit messier than this binary choice of right-side sympathetic, left-side parasympathetic.
So I hope that you’re able to use this information.
Like I said, alternate nostril breathing is profoundly impactful.
It’s profoundly powerful.
It’s something I think that most people would benefit from including into their daily practice.
Like I said, from a research perspective, if you really want to go with the stuff that you can confirm, and if you are a coach, a doctor, a therapist, and you want to give this to people, the most researched and confirmed findings so far are on the alternate nostril breathing approach to improve HRV, to lower blood pressure, and hopefully to help with anxiety levels.
All right, so start with that, but then on your own.
Like I said, test it, figure out right nostril, left nostril for you, because again, super, super powerful.
Finally, if again, you’re a doctor, a therapist, a movement coach of any kind, you’re a professional interested in how neuroscience is now informing everything that we were taught when we were in school, I have a free masterclass coming up in a couple of weeks, and you’re going to be able to find the link in the pinned comment.Please join us.
I’m going to be talking about real-world application of things exactly like this, where we dig deeply into the research, we look at one specific issue, and we say, this is what’s current, and here’s how to use it.
So if you can join us, we’ll look forward to seeing you there.
Otherwise, good luck with your nasal breathing.
