Read this before anything else on the page. Breathing exercises do not treat obstructive sleep apnea, and they do not replace a diagnosis or the treatment that follows one. If you snore, wake unrefreshed, or wake with a headache or a sore jaw, the first step is finding out what is happening, not practising a technique. Nothing on this page is a substitute for that.
With that said: we do teach breathing here, I think it is worth teaching, and the evidence behind it is more interesting and more limited than either its promoters or its critics let on.
Three different things share one word
Almost every argument about breathwork is really two people talking about different activities. There are at least three, and they are not interchangeable.
Myofunctional therapy is muscle training for the tongue, lips and face. It is closer to physiotherapy than to meditation, and it is the one with real trial evidence behind it.
Buteyko-style work trains tolerance to carbon dioxide, usually through reduced, slower breathing and gentle breath holds.
Wim Hof style work does close to the opposite: rounds of deliberate over-breathing followed by long breath holds.
Evidence for one is not evidence for another. That sounds obvious written down, and it is broken constantly in practice, usually by quoting a myofunctional therapy result in support of a breathing app.
What actually has evidence, and how much
Myofunctional therapy: real, and smaller than advertised
A 2026 overview re-analysed nine systematic reviews covering twenty one primary studies and 716 participants. In adults, myofunctional therapy reduced sleep apnea severity by a mean difference of 9.54 events per hour against control, and also improved daytime sleepiness, sleep quality and the lowest oxygen level reached overnight.
That is a real effect and it is worth having. Now hold it against the thresholds. Five or more events an hour is mild sleep apnea, fifteen or more is moderate, thirty or more is severe. A fall of about nine and a half events takes a moderate patient into the mild range and leaves them with sleep apnea.
It reduces severity. It does not end the condition, and nothing in that paper suggests it should replace treatment.
The authors are careful in a way the internet summaries are not. They report that the methodological quality of the reviews they examined was generally critically low, and that results should be interpreted cautiously because most of the underlying studies are at high risk of bias. Evidence for children is sparse.
Buteyko: the gap nobody mentions
Buteyko is the method most often recommended online for sleep apnea. There are no controlled trials of the Buteyko method in obstructive sleep apnea.
Not negative trials. None. Searching the medical literature for Buteyko alongside sleep apnea returns a handful of reviews and surveys and no trial at all, while Buteyko itself has been studied plenty in asthma. The gap is specific to this condition, and it sits underneath a great deal of confident advice.
That is not a claim that it does nothing. It is a claim about what is known, which is less than you have been told.
Why the nose matters more than the technique
Here is the finding that changed how I talk to patients about all of this.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis found that induced nasal obstruction was associated with a clinically significant increase in the apnea-hypopnea index of 13.78 events per hour, and in the oxygen desaturation index of 7.45 events per hour. The authors concluded that nasal obstruction may precipitate sleep apnea like abnormalities in people who were previously healthy.
Read that number against the one above. Blocking the nose costs more than myofunctional therapy gains. Whatever you are doing with your breathing, a nose that does not work is the larger variable.
Mouth taping, and where I actually stand
I am in favour of mouth taping for the right patient, and the conditions are the whole of my position rather than a footnote to it.
Sleep apnea already diagnosed and managed. Not suspected. Not ruled out by a wearable. Diagnosed, and being treated.
Nasal breathing already working, because any obstruction has been corrected or is being managed.
Those two conditions are not caution for its own sake. Taping the mouth of someone whose nose is obstructed reproduces exactly the exposure in the paragraph above, the one associated with a rise of 13.78 events an hour. And taping the mouth of someone with undiagnosed sleep apnea removes an escape route from a problem nobody has measured yet.
What the mouth taping evidence actually is
Thin, and pointed at a narrower group than you would guess. That same 2026 review found too few mouth taping studies to pool and narratively reviewed two, which reduced the apnea-hypopnea index in patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea.
The strongest single study is a 2025 randomized crossover trial of mouth tape in 62 patients who had obstructive sleep apnea and breathed through their mouths, all of them already using CPAP. Mouth tape improved how well they stuck with their CPAP, along with daytime sleepiness, snoring, dryness and night awakenings. Adverse effects were reported.
Notice who was studied. People already diagnosed, already treated, already wearing a machine. Nobody has studied the person who actually buys mouth tape, which is someone with no diagnosis at all.
Why everything you have read about it is positive
This is measurable rather than a matter of opinion. In a 2026 cross-sectional study of 390 Instagram reels tagged with mouth taping, 94.4 percent endorsed the practice, 55.4 percent of the content was produced by companies and 11.6 percent by medical professionals.
That is not evidence that mouth taping is bad. It is an explanation of why the material reaching you is unanimous when the literature is not.
What we teach here, and what we do not claim about it
Breathing work is taught at Restorative Wellness Center by Dr. Benton and his assistants, as part of care rather than as a standalone service. We use concepts drawn from Wim Hof and from Dr. Buteyko, and I want to be exact about that wording: concepts drawn from. Neither I nor my assistants hold a formal certification in either method, and what we offer is an introduction rather than a course.
It typically comes during and after orthotic therapy rather than instead of it, which is the sequencing that matters. The breathing work supports a plan. It is not the plan.
I find it valuable for what I would call mind work: nervous system regulation and resilience. That is my clinical judgement and my experience, offered as such, and you have the evidence above to weigh it against.
Safety, briefly and seriously
Never do breath holds in or near water. Deliberate over-breathing followed by a breath hold is the mechanism behind shallow water blackout, and people drown doing it. Not in a pool, not in a bath, not in the shower.
Do not drive during or straight after a strong breathing session. Light-headedness and tingling are common and passing, and they are not compatible with a steering wheel.
Ask your own doctor first if you are pregnant, have epilepsy or a seizure history, any heart condition or arrhythmia, uncontrolled high blood pressure, or a history of fainting or panic attacks.
And the one that applies to everybody reading this. If you have symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing, get tested. Sleep-disordered breathing and sleep bruxism are commonly seen in the same patients, and someone presenting with one is worth evaluating for the other.
Common questions
Can breathing exercises fix my sleep apnea?
No. The best evidence, for myofunctional therapy, is a reduction in severity rather than an end to the condition, and it comes from studies the reviewers themselves rate as being at high risk of bias. If you have sleep apnea you still need it diagnosed and treated.
Should I tape my mouth tonight?
Not unless both conditions above are true for you, and you will only know whether the first one is by being tested. If you are taping your mouth to find out whether you have a breathing problem, you have the order backwards.
My jaw hurts and I have been told to breathe through my nose. Is that the fix?
It might be part of a plan and it is not a diagnosis. Jaw pain has more than one possible driver, and working out which one applies to you is what an evaluation is for.
Do you certify people in Buteyko?
No, and we do not describe ourselves as Buteyko practitioners. We introduce concepts from it alongside treatment. If you want formal training in a method, that is a different thing from what we offer and it is worth being clear about.
Where to go next
If you have symptoms, start with sleep testing rather than a technique. If you want to talk about whether breathing work fits alongside your treatment, schedule a consultation. How we grade evidence is set out in our editorial standards, and the rest of the library is at health optimization.