The ability to extricate ourselves from fight/flight is is a crucial skill in general to counter stress but is especially relevant in dealing with tinnitus, which invariably throws us into fight/flight.  Breath practice represents the single best way to achieve this end. As a 2018 review article entitled “How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review of Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing” put it: “Slow-breathing techniques enhance autonomic, cerebral, and psychological flexibility in a scenario of mutual interactions: we found evidence of links between parasympathetic activity and Central Nervous System Activities related to emotional control and psychological well-being in healthy subjects” (1).  In plain English, slow breathing practices are good for our mental and emotional health.

I would urge everyone with tinnitus to undertake a regular breath work practice. To begin, breathing practices can be useful in calming the body in a spike, when what is needed is to extricate the body from the pitched state of fight/flight the spike has thrown one into.  But his is not just about using a breathing technique when your tinnitus spikes. This is about an ongoing practice that will allow you to breathe slower, longer, and deeper on a regular basis and hence assist you in gaining control over your nervous system. The benefits and the mechanics of developing a regular breathwork practice are detailed in James Nestor’s best-selling book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which I highly recommend to everyone. See also Anders Olsson’s website www.consciousbreathing.com (Olsson is featured in Nestor’s book).

Here are some practices you might find useful.

Paced breathing: Research (see Nestor’s book) suggests an ideal breath rate is about 5.5 breaths per minute, much slower than our normal breath. There are a variety of apps and YouTube videos that can guide you in breathing at this pace. This practice can be used as your daily meditation practice or as a stand along practice. A good basic app to start with is Breathe2Relax, which has a breath timer you can set to any rate. You can look up 5.5 breaths per minute” on Youtube and find numerous videos. Here is one of my favorites

The 4-7-8 technique: Andrew Weil’s Breathing: The Master Key to Self-Healing is a CD loaded with practices. One of his most popular practices is the 4-7-8 breathing technique, which is designed to induce calm in stressful situations. It involves breathing in for four, hold for seven and breathing out for eight. Here is a YouTube link to him demonstrating this technique

Box breathing:  Another popular practice is known as box breathing, where you breathe in for a count of four, hold your breath for four, exhale for four and then hold your breath again for a count of four. Again, doing a google search will yield a ton of information on this tactic.

Breathwalking: This is something I picked up from Andrew Weil’s newsletter. Breathwalking basically has you breathe in and out in a paced manner while walking.

Doral vagal breathing: Finally, while most breathing techniques are designed to extricate us from fight/flight Peter Levine has developed an exercise specifically designed to work with the shutdown/dorsal vagal state: https://www.nicabm.com/reducing-overwhelming-feelings-of-despair-with-peter-levine/