Do I need to be spiritual to learn Reiki?
November 12, 2026
Kokyū · Breath
Why Through the Nose?
Every breathing practice in the system of Reiki begins the same way: breathe in through the nose. Students ask why. A team at Northwestern University found an answer inside the brain itself.
Jōshin Kokyū Hō, focusing the Mind with the Breath, is a foundation practice within the system of Reiki. We breathe in and out through the nose.
The study
Electrodes inside the human brain
You cannot normally place electrodes inside a living human brain. But some patients with severe epilepsy have electrodes implanted for surgical planning, and a few of them agreed to breathe while the recordings ran.
The researchers matched the electrical activity of these patients’ brains against the rise and fall of their breathing. Then, in separate groups of healthy volunteers, they tested whether the phase of the breath, in or out, and its route, nose or mouth, changed how quickly people recognised fear in a face and how well they remembered images.
- Design
- Intracranial EEG plus behavioural experiments
- Brain recordings
- A small number of epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes
- Behaviour
- Separate groups of healthy adults
- Published in
- Journal of Neuroscience, 2016
What they found
The brain breathes with you, if you breathe through the nose
Breathing sets a brain rhythm
Natural nasal breathing synchronised electrical activity in the piriform cortex, the primary smell region, and from there in the amygdala and hippocampus, the seats of emotion and memory. Activity peaked on the in-breath.
Mouth breathing loses it
When the same patients were asked to breathe through the mouth, the synchrony dissipated. The air still arrived; the rhythm did not. The nose, with its direct line to the smell cortex, is what carries the signal.
Fear was read faster on the in-breath
Volunteers identified fearful faces more quickly when the face appeared during a nasal inhalation than during an exhalation. During mouth breathing, the difference vanished. The in-breath sharpens the amygdala.
Memory was better on the in-breath
Images first seen during a nasal in-breath were recalled more accurately than those seen during an out-breath. Again, the effect depended on breathing through the nose.
The nose is not just a route for air. It is a route for rhythm, and the rhythm reaches the parts of the brain that feel and remember.
Why our practices say nose, and why it may affect Kokoro (mindful heart)(
Every breathing instruction in the system, Jōshin Kokyū Hō, Seishin Toitsu, the preparation for chanting, begins with breathing in through the nose. Hakuin’s Hara practice from the eighteenth century says the same: draw the Ki down into the tanden, breathing through the nostrils. This study offers a physiological reason for a very old instruction. Nasal breathing entrains the limbic brain; mouth breathing does not.
The regions involved are worth noticing. The amygdala and hippocampus are where emotion and memory live, which is close to what is meant by the word Kokoro, the Mindful Heart. A practice that purifies Kokoro with the breath turns out to be using a breath that literally paces those regions. That is a resemblance, not a proof. But it is a good one.
Read this part too
Limitations
Extraordinary data, with the caveats that come with it.
- Brains with epilepsy.The recordings came from patients whose brains are not typical, because that is the only way to place electrodes inside a living human. The findings may not generalise perfectly to healthy brains.
- Very few brains.Intracranial recordings are rare. The neural findings rest on a handful of patients, some with electrodes in only some of the regions.
- Modest behavioural effects.The fear and memory differences were statistically clear but not large. They are effects on speed and accuracy, not transformations.
- Replication has been mixed.A later study attempting to repeat the memory finding did not find it. The neural entrainment is robust; the behavioural consequences are still being worked out.
- Nothing here is about slow or deep breathing.The participants breathed naturally. This study explains the route, not the pace or depth, of the practices in the manual.
- Not a study of meditation.Nobody was meditating or practising anything. The findings are about ordinary breathing, which is what makes them relevant, and also what limits them.
The research
Zelano, C., Jiang, H., Zhou, G., Arora, N., Schuele, S., Rosenow, J., & Gottfried, J. A. (2016). Nasal respiration entrains human limbic oscillations and modulates cognitive function. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(49), 12448–12467.
This is research into breathing, not into Reiki, Reiki treatments or Reiki training. It is included here because breath is one of the foundation practices of the system.
In through the nose. The instruction was always practical. Now it is also anatomical.
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