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Kokyū · Breath
Eight Weeks of Belly Breathing
Forty adults. Half trained to breathe slow and low, from the belly, twenty times over two months. Attention sharpened, negative mood eased, and the stress hormone in their saliva fell.
Jōshin Kokyū Hō, focusing the Mind with the Breath, is a foundation practice within the system of Reiki that breathes deeply into the belly.
The study
Training the breath to drop into the belly
Diaphragmatic breathing is the physiological name for what we know as breathing into the Hara or the tanden. The diaphragm draws down, the belly expands, the breath deepens and slows. Researchers at Beijing Normal University wanted to know whether training this over weeks, rather than trying it once, would change how people think, feel and respond to stress.
Forty healthy adults were randomly assigned either to twenty sessions of breathing training across eight weeks, using a device that gave real-time feedback on their breathing, or to a control group that received nothing. By the end, the trained group was breathing at an average of four breaths a minute during practice. Everyone was tested before and after on sustained attention, mood, and salivary cortisol.
- Design
- Randomised, with an untreated control group
- Participants
- 40 healthy adults
- Training
- 20 sessions in 8 weeks, with biofeedback
- Measured
- Attention, mood, salivary cortisol
What they found
Three things changed in the trained group
Changed after training
- Sustained attentionRose significantly in the breathing group compared with controls, on a standard vigilance task
- Negative moodFell significantly from before to after training in the breathing group
- CortisolLower after training in the breathing group, with no change in controls
Did not change
- Positive moodBelly breathing eased the negative without raising the positive
- The control groupNo shift on any measure across the eight weeks
Attention improved. That is the part most easily missed, and the part most relevant to a practice whose first instruction is to keep the Mind on the breath.
Grounding with the Hara, tested over time
Most breathing research looks at a single session. This one looked at a habit: twenty sittings across two months, which is roughly what a beginner in the system of Reiki might do practising Jōshin Kokyū Hō every few days. What it found about Hara work is more focus, steadiness, and less emotional turbulence.
Hara breathing, using the concept of Earth Ki as heavy and grounding, is the foundation that develops focus and perseverance and stabilises the Mind. A vigilance task and a cortisol swab are unusual tools for measuring that, but they moved in the right direction, and the effect on attention was the clearest of the three.
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Limitations
A proper trial, but a small one, and the cortisol result is the softest.
- Forty people.Twenty per group is small. A few strong responders can move an average.
- The control group did nothing.No attention-matched activity, so the benefit of simply showing up for twenty sessions with a device cannot be separated from the breathing.
- Cortisol changed with time, not clearly by group.The authors note a significant time effect but say the groups did not differ in how they influenced cortisol. Read this result as suggestive, not settled.
- Positive mood did not move.Belly breathing reduced negative affect but did not increase positive affect. The benefit was subtraction, not addition.
- A feedback device did the coaching.Participants trained with a real-time breathing monitor. Unaided practice at home may look different.
- Healthy adults, one city.Beijing university-affiliated volunteers. How this transfers to older, clinical or more stressed groups is untested here.
The research
Ma, X., Yue, Z.-Q., Gong, Z.-Q., Zhang, H., Duan, N.-Y., Shi, Y.-T., Wei, G.-X., & Li, Y.-F. (2017). The effect of diaphragmatic breathing on attention, negative affect and stress in healthy adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 874.
This is research into breathing, not into Reiki, Reiki treatments or Reiki training. It is included here because breath work is one of the foundation practices of the system.
Breathe deep. Keep breathing deep and allow it to become a natural breath. Knowing the Hara is a habit before it is a feeling.
