Documented Breathwork Injuries and Deaths: What Case Reports Show

A note before reading

This page discusses deaths. It is written to inform, not to alarm, and it names no private individuals. If this topic is hard for you, you can skip to the last section. If you are struggling, in the United States you can call, text or chat 988 at any time. In an emergency call 911.

Short answer

Good counts of breathwork deaths and injuries do not exist in the sources we read. What exists is a mixture of news reports, one legal claim, reviews of diving deaths and a few medical case reports about overbreathing. Most documented deaths involve deliberate overbreathing or breath-holding in water. Evidence label: case-level and journalistic, not systematic. Causes are rarely confirmed.

What the strongest mechanism evidence says

A medical review explains that "shallow water blackout" is a misleading name: it is often used as a synonym for drowning, particularly when overbreathing came first. [1] It can occur in any body of water at any depth. [1] A physiology review says overbreathing before a breath-hold dive makes the delay in the urge to breathe worse. [2]

An Australian review of 317 snorkelling and breath-hold diving deaths found up to 34 linked to extended breath-holding, with or without overbreathing, with inadequate supervision, leading to drowning. [3] These were divers, not breathwork students, but it shows the same mechanism in real deaths.

Reports about one named method

Live Science reports that multiple people who reportedly did a well-known hyperventilation-and-breath-hold method's breathing exercise in water have died. [4] A Dutch newspaper reported in 2016 that at least three people had died after practising it. [4] A journalist told Live Science he had linked 31 deaths to the method from public news reports and private accounts, but none had been confirmed in a court of law to involve the method. [4]

Please read that carefully. A count from one journalist is not a verified statistic. Deaths in water have many possible causes, and we could not check the individual cases.

A 2022 lawsuit alleges that the method's breathing exercises caused a teenager to drown in a family pool. [5] The company's chief executive officer called the allegations "plainly not true." [5] We did not read the outcome of that case, so we make no statement about it.

The company's safety guidance, as reported, is to sit or lie down in a safe place and never practise deep breathing before or during immersion in or over water. [4] The company says some videos of its founder are not reflective of the official method. [4] Live Science's experts also raised heart-rhythm risks. [4] See Wim Hof-style breathing and water and cold exposure plus breathwork claims.

Injuries from overbreathing itself

Medical case reports of breathwork injuries are scarce. Proper evidence not found for breathwork-specific case reports of death or serious injury in peer-reviewed journals. We searched Europe PMC for breathwork and Wim Hof with death, fatal, case report, pneumothorax, seizure, syncope and stroke.

One related case report describes an 18-year-old with air trapped in the neck and chest tissues after a panic attack and overbreathing; she was admitted for observation and made a full recovery. [6] It was not breathwork, but it shows overbreathing can occasionally cause physical injury. [6] Overbreathing commonly causes numbness, tingling and dizziness. [7]

In mental health, there are single case reports of psychotic illness after unguided yoga practice including pranayama, which cannot show cause. [8] See breathwork risks in psychiatric conditions.

What trials report

Trial safety reporting is thin. A systematic review of one method found that in one included trial there was one serious adverse event, judged unrelated. [9] Another trial team wrote that potential adverse effects of breathwork have not been sufficiently studied. [10] A small study of experienced practitioners reported no adverse events but noted that people were chosen because they had practised before without problems. [11] A consumer page says one report of 11,000 hospital patients had no adverse reactions, [12] but we did not read that report and cannot check it. Absence of reports is not proof of safety, especially when screening and follow-up are limited.

What this means in practice

• Never combine deliberate overbreathing or breath-holding with water of any kind. See breathwork, driving, water and heights.
• Do not practise alone with intensive methods if you have a condition on the contraindication list.
• Treat dizziness, chest pain, palpitations and new neurological symptoms as reasons to stop. [13]
• Report any harm from a class or product to your doctor; we found no single reporting system in the sources we read.