The Neuroscience and Physiology of Breathwork: Spiritual Experiences, Emotions, and Memory

One of the most common questions I get asked after a powerful breathwork session is:

"What just happened to me?"

Really, “Wtf just happened to me?!”

Students regularly experience big emotions, releases, vivid memories from childhood, feelings of unity and connection, or what many describe as a spiritual awakening. 

Others feel numbness in their extremities or surges of energy moving through their bodies.

For thousands of years, spiritual traditions have used the breath as a tool for healing, insight, as well as accessing expanded states of consciousness. Today, modern neuroscience is catching up with what ancient traditions have long understood:

The breath has a remarkable ability to change the state of the brain, nervous system, and body.

While researchers are still uncovering exactly how breathwork works, a growing body of evidence suggests that breathwork can influence everything from emotional processing and memory recall to altered states of consciousness and spiritual experiences. 

Duh.

Breathwork Changes Consciousness

Revelation Breathwork online classes utilize a style of breathing known as conscious connected breathing. Conscious connected breathing is also a bit of an umbrella term.

Unlike our normal unconscious breathing patterns, with this approach we intentionally change the rhythm, depth, and pace of respiration for an extended period of time. 

Researchers often refer to the resulting experience as an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC).

An altered state of consciousness is not necessarily something mysterious or unusual, though it may feel that way. We move through altered states every day when we dream, meditate, become deeply absorbed in music, or enter a flow state. We also experience these more mildly when we drink coffee or alcohol.

What makes breathwork unique is that it allows us to intentionally enter these states using nothing more than our breath as well as consciously and sober and in a more “controlled” setting..

Recent research on high-ventilation breathwork found that participants reported experiences similar to those observed in psychedelic research, including feelings of unity, transcendence, emotional breakthroughs, spiritual insight, and mystical-type experiences.

The fascinating part is that these experiences are occurring without ingesting any external substance. The breath itself is the catalyst.

What's Happening Physiologically?

One of the primary mechanisms involves carbon dioxide.

During periods of continuous deep breathing in breathwork, we exhale carbon dioxide faster than the body produces it. This creates a temporary state known as hypocapnia, meaning lower levels of carbon dioxide in the blood.

For years, people assumed breathwork worked because it increased oxygen.

In reality, oxygen levels remain relatively stable. The more significant change is the reduction in carbon dioxide and the resulting shift in blood chemistry.

This temporary shift influences cerebral blood flow, nervous system activation, and activity within several brain regions involved in emotion, memory, and self-awareness.

Many of the physical sensations people experience during breathwork—including tingling, vibrations, temperature changes, lightness, and altered body sensations—are related to these physiological changes and carbon dioxide.

In other words, breathwork is not "all in your head."

Something very real is happening throughout the entire body.

The Nervous System Begins to Reorganize

One of the more researched aspects of revelation breathwork involves its impact on the autonomic nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system regulates many of the body's unconscious functions, including heart rate, stress responses, digestion, immune activity, and emotional regulation.

A review published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that intentional breathing practices can directly influence autonomic nervous system activity, increasing vagal tone, improving heart rate variability, and supporting emotional regulation.

The vagus nerve appears to play a particularly important role.

Sometimes referred to as the body's "superhighway," the vagus nerve creates a communication pathway between the brain, heart, lungs, and digestive system.

Researchers have proposed that conscious breathing acts as a form of respiratory vagal stimulation, helping regulate stress responses while simultaneously increasing awareness of internal bodily states.

This may help explain why so many people report feeling calmer, clearer, and more emotionally grounded after a breathwork session.

A 2023 meta-analysis published in Scientific Reports examined breathwork interventions across multiple studies and found significant improvements in stress, anxiety, and overall mental well-being.

The science increasingly suggests that breathwork is not simply helping us feel better psychologically, but it is regulating the systems that create emotional experiences in the first place.

At the same time, deeper layers of emotion often become accessible to us as we regulate.

It’s theorized that the nervous system begins to feel safe enough to process experiences that may have been held beneath conscious awareness.

Why Do Memories Surface?

One of the most intriguing findings from breathwork research involves regions of the brain associated with emotional memory.

A 2025 neuroimaging study found that altered states induced by breathwork were associated with changes in activity within the amygdala and hippocampus—areas heavily involved in emotional processing and memory formation.

This may help explain why memories often arise spontaneously during breathwork.

Participants frequently report recalling childhood experiences, forgotten life events, relationship patterns, and emotional memories they have not thought about for years.

Often, these memories often emerge not as intellectual stories but as felt experiences.

Rather than remembering something conceptually, people often re-experience the emotions, sensations, and energy associated with a particular moment in their lives. Many facilitators also observe that the breath seems to bring forward exactly what is ready to be seen.

While science is still exploring why this occurs, emerging research suggests that altered patterns of brain activity may temporarily increase access to memory networks and emotional material stored outside of everyday awareness.

Additionally, when it comes to “trauma”, traumatic memories are memories that get encoded in the brain as “raw sensory data” separately from our narratives that make sense of experience. Traumatic memories are encoded differently in the brain then everyday working memories.

Personally, it’s interesting that breathwork helps us reorganize our life story, our nervous systems and — the breath does the work! 

Quieting our Damn Minds

Another area of research that is popular involves the Default Mode Network (DMN).

The DMN is a collection of brain regions associated with self-referential thinking, personal and autobiographical identity, remembering the past, imagining the future, and the ongoing internal narrative many of us experience throughout the day.

You can think of it as the voice in your head that is constantly evaluating, analyzing, and telling the story of "me." 

It’s also the thing that Eckhart Tolle and Buddhism both point to as an illusion covering the Self or reality “as it is”.

Research suggests that breathwork may temporarily alter activity within this network (the default mode network). Researchers have proposed that these shifts contribute to experiences of ego softening, expanded awareness, and feelings of connection that participants frequently report. Research on mindfulness meditation is coming up with similar findings.

When the usual mental chatter quiets, something else often becomes available.

Presence. Stillness. Connection and intimacy.

Many of our students describe a feeling that they are tapping into something larger than themselves, within themselves and that this slowly becomes a guiding presence in their lives.

The Biology of Spiritual Experience

Perhaps the most fascinating question is whether spiritual experiences have a biological root.

The answer appears to be yes. That does not mean spiritual experiences are "just biology."

Rather, biology may be one of the pathways through which these experiences occur.

As breathing alters nervous system activity, cerebral blood flow, emotional processing networks, interoceptive awareness, and self-referential thinking, consciousness itself begins to shift.

The boundaries between self and world may soften. The boundaries between me you and you and God, can become more subtle.

A sense of timelessness may emerge.

Feelings of love, gratitude, awe, unity, or connection may arise.

Many people describe these moments as deeply spiritual.

Not because they adopted a new belief system, but because they directly experienced something beyond their ordinary sense of self.

The Breath as a Bridge

The science of breathwork is still young.

But there is a lot of emerging research that points towards some remarkable findings. 

I enjoy reading and studying, but admittedly, my expertise is facilitating the experience and holding compassionate, neutral and loving space. 

If you want to dive deeper into the research, I highly suggest it! 

Revelation Breathwork is far more than a mechanism for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. It’s an avenue to remembering and an avenue home.

Research just gives us a new and nuanced understanding of the bridge between body and mind.

Between conscious and unconscious awareness.

Between physiology and spirituality.

Whether viewed through the lens of neuroscience, psychology, or ancient wisdom traditions, the message is the same:

Change your breath, and you change your state.

Change your state, and entirely new levels of healing and transformation become available.

Sometimes those possibilities look like emotional healing.

Sometimes they look like memories returning to the surface.

And sometimes they look like a profound encounter with the deeper dimensions of who we truly are.

If you want to try Revelation Breathwork Classes Online, we offer classes on Zoom six days a week!

Check out our calendar of classes here.

You can try for free via a 2-week free trial or our first class free promo (no strings) with the code FirstClass.

Research References

Fincham, G. W., et al. (2023). Breathwork improves stress and mental health: A meta-analysis. Scientific Reports.

Havenith, M. N., et al. (2025). Decreased CO₂ saturation during circular breathwork supports emergence of altered states of consciousness. Communications Psychology.

Zaccaro, A., et al. (2018). How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Gerritsen, R. J. S., & Band, G. P. H. (2018). Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Kartar, A. A., et al. (2025). Neurobiological Substrates of Altered States of Consciousness. Neuroimaging research examining brain network changes during altered state