breathwork · 6 min read

why you might cry during breathwork

what the tears are, what to do in the moment, and when to slow down

written by saddy babu · 20 october 2026

somatic practitioner and breathwork facilitator

why tears come when you slow down

most of the day, your attention points outwards, at the next task or the next message, while feelings carry on underneath. breathwork turns that around. you lie down or sit, close your eyes and pay attention to your own body for a while, so feelings that were already there finally get noticed. the first sign is often physical, like a tight throat or heat behind the eyes, and words tend to arrive last, if at all.

nobody has pinned down exactly why breathwork brings tears, and researchers are still working out what crying does for us. meditation can bring tears too, without any special breathing. when jared lindahl, willoughby britton and colleagues interviewed sixty meditators about the challenging side of their practice, they documented involuntary crying that came with joy, with grief or with no particular content.

relief, grief, tenderness or nothing you can name

tears come with more than sadness. relief can bring them, when your body finally stops bracing, and so can grief, sometimes for something you thought you had finished with. tenderness brings them too: researchers who study the feeling of being moved find it commonly comes with moist eyes, a lump in the throat and warmth in the chest. and sometimes tears arrive with no story at all.

you don’t need to work out which one it is while it’s happening. a feeling is something you’re having, and feelings move. the meaning can come later or not at all, and the practice counts either way.

does crying actually help?

the research is mixed. when jonathan rottenberg, lauren bylsma and ad vingerhoets looked at more than three thousand accounts of a recent cry, most people said their mood improved, about a third noticed no improvement and around one in ten felt worse. people who had support while they cried were the most likely to feel better, and in a related study of students in thirty-five countries, crying helped less often when people fought the tears or felt ashamed of crying.

timing matters too. in a small lab study by asmir gračanin and colleagues, people who cried at an emotional film felt worse straight afterwards, were back where they started twenty minutes later and felt better than before the film after ninety minutes. so if you feel raw at the end of a session, give it some time.

a 2014 review by gračanin, bylsma and vingerhoets proposed that crying may soothe us directly, partly through the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, the side that slows things down, while describing the support for it so far as largely inconsistent. tears are welcome, and there’s no need to chase them.

what to do when the tears come

let them come, without stopping them or making them bigger. if you’ve been breathing fast or forcefully, let your breathing return to its own pace and let each exhale run a little longer than the inhale, which is the simplest way I know to help a body settle. open your eyes if you like, look around the room and feel your feet. and keep tissues within reach. it’s the least mystical advice in this article, and possibly the most useful.

if the feeling is big, move your attention between it and somewhere steady, like your hands, and back again. that swing is called pendulation, and it lets you stay with a feeling in amounts you can manage. you can also stop at any time, and stopping early always counts.

the line to watch is overwhelm. if you can’t feel your feet, can’t slow your breathing or start to feel far away, you’ve moved outside your window of tolerance, so stop and come back to the room.

how to tell feelings from over-breathing

some of what happens in breathwork is chemistry. fast or forceful breathing can blow off carbon dioxide faster than your body makes it, and the low level that follows is called hypocapnia. with less of it, your blood becomes slightly more alkaline and its free calcium drops, so nerves and muscles get jumpier. that’s the tingling in your hands, feet or around your mouth, and if it carries on, hands that cramp or curl. changing blood flow to the brain is thought to explain the light-headedness.

some breathwork rooms call these sensations energy moving or a release. physiologically, they’re the expected effect of over-breathing and a clear sign to slow down. as your breathing settles, carbon dioxide builds back up and they usually ease, and if they don’t, stop and get medical advice. over-breathing can also bring on a panic attack in people prone to them, which is part of why fast styles aren’t for everyone.

feelings behave differently. they tend to shift as you pay attention to them, while tingling from over-breathing follows your breathing: speed up and it grows, slow down and it fades. the two can happen together, and the answer to both is to slow down.

afterwards, and when to get support

take a few minutes before you get up, drink some water and keep the next hour light. if it helps, note what you felt and where you felt it, without needing to interpret it. feeling tender or flat for a while is common, and later a body scan lets you check in without changing your breathing. there’s a free ten-minute one in my voice.

sometimes more than tears comes up. in the meditation study above, re-experiencing traumatic memories was not uncommon among people with a trauma history, and breathwork can stir up the same. if memories arrive with force, or feelings stay big for hours, work with a trained practitioner who can help you meet them in smaller doses, with support. if a low mood stays for days, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional.

common questions about crying during breathwork