Does slow breathing before bed help you fall asleep?

Slow breathing before bed consistently calms the body's stress signals, but whether it helps you fall asleep faster is less clear. The sleep studies are small, and the best-controlled one found no clear effect on sleep. It's free and low-risk, so it's a reasonable thing to try as part of winding down.

What does slow breathing do to your body?

Slow breathing increases heart rate variability, and this part is well studied. A 2022 meta-analysis in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews pulled together 223 studies of voluntary slow breathing. It found that slow breathing increases vagally mediated heart rate variability which reflects activity of the parasympathetic nervous system. The increase showed up during breathing sessions, right after a single session and after multi-session programs.

A 2018 systematic review in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience looked at slow breathing techniques, defined as fewer than 10 breaths a minute, in healthy people. Across 15 studies, it found changes in heart rate variability and brain activity alongside psychological effects. Those included more comfort and relaxation and less anxiety and arousal.

That's a good reason to think slow breathing could help with the racing, wired feeling that keeps some people awake. It isn't direct evidence about sleep.

Does it help you fall asleep?

Whether slow breathing helps you fall asleep is where the evidence gets thin.

A 2015 study in Psychophysiology compared 14 people with self-reported insomnia and 14 good sleepers. The people with insomnia had lower vagal activity to start with. When they practiced slow, paced breathing for 20 minutes before going to sleep, at 0.1 Hz (six breaths a minute), their sleep, measured with polysomnography, improved. They took less time to fall asleep, woke up less often, spent less time awake during the night and had higher sleep efficiency.

That sounds promising, but the design limits it. The breathing night was compared with a baseline night, not with a randomly assigned control, and the group was small. The good sleepers showed no difference.

The authors of a later trial, described below, also point to an earlier randomized trial of just 10 people. In it, a single 20-minute session of slow breathing guided by biofeedback before bed improved a combined score of sleep disturbance. Again, that's a very small sample. They also describe a randomized crossover trial of 16 women with insomnia symptoms, in which slow breathing at bedtime led to fewer awakenings and fewer shifts between sleep stages than a control night, but no change in other sleep measures. That trial used sound and visual cues to guide the pace, so it's hard to separate the breathing from the guidance.

A 2020 pilot trial in Scientific Reports was more tightly controlled. Researchers in Finland randomly assigned 20 young adults to either slow breathing or music listening before bed, and measured their sleep with polysomnography on an intervention night and a control night. The 10 people in the breathing group took five breaths a minute for 30 minutes, starting about an hour before bedtime. Both activities raised heart rate variability right away. Neither clearly improved sleep quality, and slow breathing had no main effect on basic sleep measures like time to fall asleep. The authors called their findings exploratory and said they need repeating in other groups. They did find some changes in sleep brain activity after the breathing night, and they suggested future studies use longer practice periods, since slow breathing may take some practice before it pays off.

Put together, slow breathing clearly shifts the body toward relaxation in the moment. Whether that turns into falling asleep faster hasn't been shown convincingly in good-quality trials.

How do you try it?

To try slow breathing, aim for about 5 to 6 breaths a minute, the simple paced breathing the studies used. One way to do that:

1. Sit or lie comfortably with the lights low.
2. Breathe in gently for about 5 seconds.
3. Breathe out gently for about 5 seconds.
4. Keep the rhythm steady for 10 to 20 minutes. A timer or a breathing app with a pacing guide makes it easier.

Don't force big breaths. The point is a slow, relaxed rhythm, not filling your lungs as much as you can. If you feel lightheaded, go back to normal breathing.

The 2022 meta-analysis described slow breathing as a low-tech, low-cost technique with few adverse effects expected, which makes it easy to experiment with.

Does the ratio of in-breath to out-breath matter?

The ratio of in-breath to out-breath doesn't matter as much as breathing apps might suggest. The 2018 review in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience included studies that tested different patterns at around six breaths a minute. One compared an even split between breathing in and out with a slightly longer out-breath, in a ratio of 4 to 6, at 6 and 5.5 breaths a minute. Every paced pattern raised feelings of relaxation compared with normal breathing. Another tested both a short in-breath with a long out-breath and the reverse, and found that six breaths a minute felt more pleasant and less arousing than 12.

So the slow pace seems to matter more than the exact split. If a longer out-breath feels calming, use it. If an even rhythm is easier to follow, that's fine too.

Several of the studies in that review had people breathe through the nose. The authors also put forward a hypothesis that receptors in the nasal passages help link slow breathing to changes in brain activity. That idea is still unproven, but it's one more reason to breathe through your nose if it's clear.

When and where should you do it?

You can do slow breathing right before sleep or earlier in the evening, since the research gives you some flexibility. In the 2015 insomnia study, people practiced for 20 minutes right before going to sleep. In the 2020 Finnish trial, people sat up for their 30-minute session, starting about an hour before their usual bedtime, and then got on with their evening routine. They used a smartphone app set to the right pace, with sound cues to follow.

A few practical points follow from that:

• If you tend to doze off mid-session, do it sitting up before you get into bed.
• If the session itself helps you drift off, doing it in bed is reasonable.
• A pacing app with audio cues lets you close your eyes instead of watching a timer.
• Do it most nights for a while before judging it. The 2020 authors thought slow breathing may need practice before it helps.

If your nose is blocked, breathing slowly through it can feel like a struggle. How to unblock your nose before bed has a few ideas, and nasal breathing exercises covers other techniques people use.

Where does it fit in a bedtime routine?

Treat slow breathing as one piece of winding down rather than a sleep treatment. It can sit alongside your other bedtime habits, which sleep hygiene tips covers.

Give it a couple of weeks before deciding whether it helps you.

If you enjoy the calm of slow nasal breathing before bed but wake up with a dry mouth, your mouth may be falling open once you're asleep. Our guide to why you wake up with a dry mouth explains why, and what mouth taping is covers how some adults with a clear nose keep their lips closed overnight. Try the nose test before you start.

If you want to try mouth tape and nasal strips together, our pick is the Titan Sleep System, which pairs TitanAir Nasal Strips with Titan Mouth Tape.

When should you see a doctor?

If you regularly struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep, or you're tired during the day despite enough time in bed, talk to a doctor. Loud snoring with gasping or pauses in breathing is a reason to see a doctor too, since it can be a sign of sleep apnea.

* This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or health condition. Talk to a qualified healthcare provider about your health.