The Buteyko Breathing Method
The other side of breathwork
Get geeky: the science
Often, breathing less is exactly what your body needs.
We tend to think that breathing more means getting more oxygen. But our respiratory system is far more complex than the common myths lead us to believe.
Carbon dioxide isn't simply a waste gas that your body needs to get rid of, as it's often described. It plays important roles in regulating our breathing and influencing how readily oxygen is released from haemoglobin to our tissues.
So, when it comes to CO₂, we need to be a little selfish. We don't want to get rid of more than our body needs to. Maintaining an appropriate level of CO₂ helps support the efficient release of oxygen from the blood to the tissues.
We're teaching you to breathe in a way that better matches what your body actually needs.
And this isn't new science. The Bohr effect, first described by Danish physiologist Christian Bohr in 1904, helps explain the relationship between CO₂ and oxygen release.
What does overbreathing look like?
It doesn't necessarily mean dramatically over the top breathing that you may picture when someone is having a panic attack. For some it might be more hidden than others. Signs you are overbreathing can include:
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Respiratory Rate is faster per minute
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Bigger, more effortful and often accompanied with audible breathing
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Predominantly through the mouth
And because these changes can happen gradually, they can start to feel completely normal. Other things that are red flags that you’ve blinked at until now:
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Frequent sighing or yawning
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Snoring or pausing of the breath
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Noticeable chest movement while resting
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A feeling that you need to take a bigger breath
These can be clues that your breathing could benefit from a reset.
What does Buteyko actually involve?
At Breathscape, I use the Buteyko Breathing Method as a form of breathing retraining, using different techniques to help recalibrate the brain's breathing response to CO₂ and allow more functional breathing to occur.
Depending on your symptoms, story and starting point, this can involve working with:
Nasal breathing
Making nasal breathing more comfortable and habitual.
Decongesting the Nose
We naturally explore techniques to open the nose to ensure full-time nasal breathing.
Breathing volume
Learning to recognise and reduce unnecessary overbreathing.
Hypercapnia Training & Breath Hold training
Using controlled breath-holds and reduced-volume breathing to create a temporary rise in CO₂. This helps the body gradually become more tolerant of higher levels of CO₂, allowing more natural breathing patterns to develop.
Breathing rhythm
Developing slower, quieter and more relaxed breathing.
Breathing mechanics
Working with the diaphragm, posture and the physical mechanics of breathing allowing the diaphragm to lead.
Breathing during sleep and exercise
Taking the principles beyond your practice sessions and into everyday life.
The aim isn't to give you another thing to think about forever. The aim is to make better breathing feel natural and automatic.
Connecting your breath to your health journey
At Breathscape, I work with people across three main areas where breathing may be influencing how they feel and the symptoms they experience.
These areas often overlap, because the breath is deeply interconnected with both the body and the nervous system.
Restoring sleep
Snoring · Sleep Apnoea (OSA) · UARS · Insomnia
Breathing with ease
Asthma · Rhinitis · Hayfever · COPD · Post-nasal drip · Congestion
Calming the mind
Anxiety · Panic Disorder · Stress · Busy mind · Brain fog · Fatigue
From Russia to Australia
The Buteyko Breathing Method remained relatively unknown outside the Soviet Union for many years. In 1990, Alexander Stalmatski brought the method to Australia, beginning its journey into the Australian breathing and health community.
During the 1990s, interest in the method grew, including among Australian researchers and health professionals.
Research into Buteyko and asthma was conducted in Brisbane at the Mater Private Hospital, with findings published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1998. The Buteyko group showed significant improvements in quality of life, alongside reductions in the use of both preventer and reliever medications.
Australia therefore became an important part of the method's journey from a relatively obscure Soviet breathing approach into the wider Western conversation about breathing retraining.
Breathwork is the new black
From yoga and meditation to modern breathwork and high-intensity breathing techniques, we've never had more interest in the breath. This is a good thing. But I'm often left wondering: who is teaching the everyday person what breathing well, every day, looks like?
Many of these breathwork practices have their place, but it's important to understand what you're actually asking your respiratory system to do. For example, the Wim Hof Method combines periods of deliberate deep, rapid breathing with breath holds, building adrenaline. Holotropic Breathwork and other similar approaches use prolonged, deliberately intensified breathing over a longer period, often with the intention of facilitating an altered state of consciousness or emotional experience.
But Buteyko takes a different strategy, to understanding how the respiratory system works and retraining everyday breathing towards a pattern that is actually allow a harmonius balance of the critical breathing gasing in your body (O2 and CO2).
It's less about creating a breathing 'experience' and more about changing the way you breathe throughout everyday life. And making this healthy breathing say with you.
Dr Buteyko's interview: The early days of the Method 1988 (Part 1 of 3)
Want to start learning? Breathing 101
Learn the foundations of functional breathing and discover the skills no-one ever taught you. A 75-minute introduction to the Buteyko Breathing Method, with practical exercises you can take into everyday life.
Or ready to explore your breathing?
Let’s talk about your story, what you’re experiencing, what you notice, and explore whether breathing retraining could benefit you.
Questioning how we breathe
Konstantin Buteyko wasn't simply interested in breathing exercises or creating a feel good program. He was interested in physiology. Studying the relationship between breathing, carbon dioxide, oxygen, blood chemistry and the body's regulation of breathing.
He developed ways of investigating these relationships and spent decades developing and refining his approach. His central idea was both simple and, at the time, controversial:
| Perhaps we don't always need to breathe more. Perhaps we need to breathe better and less.
In simple terms, the Buteyko Breathing Method aims to normalise breathing volume and re-establish more functional breathing patterns where dysfunctional habits have developed.
The journey to recognition
Buteyko presented his findings to the medical establishment in the Soviet Union in 1960. His ideas were met with scepticism and resistance, but he continued to develop and investigate his method.
A formal clinical evaluation took place in 1968 at the All-Union Research Institute of Pulmonology in Leningrad, followed by further evaluation in the early 1980s.
Then, in 1985, the Soviet Ministry of Health issued Order No. 591, authorising implementation of the Buteyko Method in the management of bronchial asthma.
From the beginnings of Buteyko's work in the 1950s to formal recognition within the Soviet health system, the journey took a number of decades. It's a reminder that new ideas in healthcare can take time to move from observation and research into mainstream practice, a pattern that continues today.
The Buteyko Breathing Method was developed by Ukrainian physician Dr Konstantin Buteyko in the 1950s, after he became interested in the relationship between breathing and health.
While observing his patients, Buteyko noticed a recurring pattern: people who were more unwell often appeared to breathe harder and faster than necessary. He began to question whether breathing was simply responding to illness or whether the way we breathe could also influence how we feel and more importantly our systems.
This question became the foundation of his life's work and linked hyperventilation to conditions such as asthma, sleep apnoea, snoring, allergies and more.