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Bhramari (humming breath)

Bhramari is a hatha yoga breathing practice in which the out-breath is made with a humming sound like a bee; the Hatha Yoga Pradipika describes it and the tradition holds that the mind becomes absorbed in the sound. Small trials suggest a single session shifts heart rate variability towards parasympathetic (calming) activity, but a randomised trial in adults with essential hypertension found no greater drop in blood pressure than slow breathing, and studies on stress, anxiety and reaction time are small and mostly uncontrolled. Humming raises nasal nitric oxide many-fold in laboratory studies, but whether this matters for health is not established, and one set of experiments found no effect of humming on cognition or emotional processing. No claim reaches moderate or high certainty because the evidence comes from a few small trials, many without proper control groups, and a 2018 systematic review rated the earlier studies' quality very low.

Evidence retrieved up to

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5 research claims, 1 tradition claim

Research5Tradition1
Marks

What the research shows

In small trials, a session of bhramari shifted heart rate variability towards parasympathetic (calming) activity in adults, including adults with essential hypertension.

No known concerns at usual amountsBenefit

Who this is about

adults, including adults with essential hypertension

Details and sources

Practical note

Graded low: one randomised trial of 70 adults against placebo slow breathing found the shift during recovery from a single 5-minute session, a second trial of 100 adults compared bhramari only with another pranayama, and the earlier studies in a 2018 systematic review were non-randomised and rated very low quality; downgraded for imprecision and risk of bias, and the outcome is a short-term physiological marker. Sessions in the trials lasted 5 to 20 minutes.

Sources

In a randomised trial of adults with essential hypertension, a single 5-minute session of bee-humming breathing did not lower systolic, diastolic or mean blood pressure more than placebo slow breathing.

No known concerns at usual amountsNo clear effect

Who this is about

adults with essential hypertension

Details and sources

Practical note

Graded low: a single randomised trial of 70 adults testing one 5-minute session, with wide confidence intervals; downgraded for imprecision and for indirectness to regular practice. An uncontrolled study summarised in a 2018 systematic review reported a 5-6 mm Hg fall in mean blood pressure in 50 healthy adults after 5 minutes; the review rated its evidence base very low quality.

Sources

In small uncontrolled or non-randomised studies, adults who practised bhramari, alone or with alternate-nostril breathing, reported lower stress and anxiety scores afterwards.

No known concerns at usual amountsBenefit

Who this is about

adults, including university students and adults in COVID-19 home isolation

Details and sources

Practical note

Graded very low: one single-group pre-post study of 42 adults and one non-randomised comparison of two intact classes of 70 students that combined bhramari with nadi shodhana; downgraded for risk of bias, indirectness and imprecision, and the authors of the first study call for randomised trials. Programmes ran from 15 days of 20-minute online sessions to weekly classes over 7 weeks.

Sources

In laboratory studies of healthy adults, humming raised nasal nitric oxide many-fold compared with quiet breathing out, through faster air exchange with the sinuses; whether this has any health effect is not established.

No known concerns at usual amountsUnclear

Who this is about

healthy adults

Details and sources

Practical note

Graded low for the nitric oxide rise itself: small experimental studies of 10 healthy adults each, from one research group, agree on a large rise; downgraded for imprecision and limited independent replication. Any link from this rise to the effects of bhramari is a mechanism hypothesis, not a tested outcome, and later experiments testing it for cognition found no benefit.

Sources

Evidence on bhramari or humming and cognition is mixed: a randomised trial in healthy adolescents found shorter reaction times after 6 months of bhramari, while experiments in adults found no benefit of humming for short-term cognitive performance or emotional processing.

No known concerns at usual amountsUnclear

Who this is about

healthy adolescents and adults

Details and sources

Practical note

Graded very low: one randomised trial of 520 adolescents with an unclear control condition and a reaction-time outcome, set against null experiments of humming in adults; downgraded for inconsistency, indirectness and risk of bias. The adolescent trial ran for 6 months.

Sources

What the tradition holds

The hatha yoga tradition, in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, describes bhramari as a quick in-breath followed by a slow out-breath made with a humming sound like a bee, and holds that the practice absorbs and calms the mind.

No known concerns at usual amountsBenefit

Who this is about

people practising hatha yoga pranayama

Details and sources

The tradition's frame

Yoga

In hatha yoga, bhramari is named for the bee: the mind and prana are said to become absorbed in the humming sound, so that mental fluctuations and worries fall away, consciousness is purified and energy (shakti) is revealed; the Hatha Yoga Pradipika links the practice to bliss in consciousness.

Practical note

Modern descriptions in the research literature have the practitioner sit comfortably, breathe slowly through the nose with the lips closed and the ears closed by the fingers, and hum on the out-breath.

Vegan note

The practice uses no products of any kind and suits a vegan lifestyle.

Sources