From the library

Nasal breathing had a rulebook five centuries before it had a trend report

Strips, tape and trackers made breathing through your nose fashionable. A 15th-century manual had already given it a direction and a count.

Breath Lab4 min read
Morning sunlight passing through a glass prism, spreading a band of colour across a white surface.
Morning sunlight passing through a glass prism, spreading a band of colour across a white surface.

Nasal breathing keeps landing on wellness trend lists. A 15th-century yoga manual already had it, with a count.

That is not a dig at the trend. Breathing through your nose instead of your mouth is a sensible habit, and it is good that more people are paying attention to it. But look at how the trend arrived. The Global Wellness Institute’s trend lists put nasal breathing next to sleep in 2024 and next to mouth tape in 2025. The apps that show up when you search for it are mostly measurement tools: overnight trackers, nasal patency tests, CO2 tolerance checks. Almost everything on offer tells you whether you are breathing through your nose. Very little tells you what to do with it once you are.

The older answer is in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a manual of hatha yoga compiled by Svatmarama in the 15th century. Its second chapter is about breath, and four verses in it describe a practice that is entirely nasal and entirely structured.

What the verses actually say

Hatha Yoga Pradipika 2.7 to 2.10, in plain paraphrase:

  • Sit in a steady seat.
  • Draw the breath in slowly through the left nostril.
  • Let it out through the right.
  • Then draw it in through the right and let it out through the left.
  • Keep going, alternating, slowly and within your capacity.

That is nadi shodhana, known in much of India as anulom vilom: alternate nostril breathing. The mouth stays closed the whole time. The in-breath and the out-breath both go through the nose. Most modern versions leave out the breath holds that the classical text adds between the in-breath and out-breath. Beginners are usually taught without them, and anyone pregnant or with a heart or blood pressure condition should skip the holds unless a doctor agrees.

Notice what the text adds to “breathe through your nose”. It adds a direction (left, then right, then back), and it adds a pace (slow, within capacity). Modern teachers usually turn that pace into a number. A common starting count is in for 4 and out for 8, with the exhale twice as long as the inhale, lengthened only while it stays easy.

Why a count changes the practice

A habit like “breathe through your nose more” is hard to practise, because there is nothing to practise. It is a default you either keep or lose. A count turns it into something you can sit down and do for five minutes, notice when you drift from, and come back to.

The alternation does something similar for attention. Closing one nostril, breathing through the other, and switching gives the mind a small job that repeats every few seconds. That is the part people tend to describe as calming. It is a description of what the practice feels like, not a medical claim.

The research on alternate nostril breathing is real but modest. One example from this month: a study from King George’s Medical University in Lucknow, published in the October 2026 issue of the International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, compared healthy young adults who practised anuloma viloma with a control group. The practice group ended with lower pulse rate and blood pressure and better peak expiratory flow. It was a small sample of healthy young people, and the published abstract does not describe it as a randomised trial, so it says nothing about treating anyone. Single-session heart rate variability results for alternate nostril breathing are mixed. Multi-week blood pressure and heart rate results are more consistent. That is about as far as the evidence goes, and it is worth saying so plainly in a field where “regulate your nervous system” is often sold as a guarantee.

How to try the old version

  1. Sit upright. The floor is traditional, but a firm chair works if your back is off the backrest and both feet are flat.
  2. Close the right nostril. Breathe in slowly through the left for a count of 4.
  3. Switch. Close the left, breathe out through the right for a count of 8.
  4. Breathe in through the right for 4, switch, out through the left for 8.
  5. That is one round. Do five minutes. Keep the mouth closed throughout.
  6. Stop if you feel dizzy and breathe normally. Skip the practice on days your nose is blocked, when you have a fever, or straight after a meal.

If 4 and 8 feel tight, use 3 and 6. The ratio matters more than the size of the numbers.

The left side first

You may have noticed the practice begins and ends on the left. Hatha yoga names the left channel ida, the moon side, and the right pingala, the sun side. That naming is the subject of this Sunday’s piece, timed to this weekend’s full moon.

For now, the short version is this: the trend rediscovered the nose. The tradition had already worked out what to do with it.

Anuloma Viloma Timer is free on the App Store. No subscription necessary.

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