In the 2012 film adaptation of the Dr Seuss book The Lorax, a fable about capitalist greed, air is a commodity.

The mayor of Thneedville deprives the city’s residents of trees so a company he heads can sells bottles of air. He has, as one advertising lackey puts it, “gotten rich selling people air that’s ‘fresher’ than the stinky stuff outside”.

If a recent proliferation of real-life courses, books and online search interest is anything to go by, the act of getting that air into one’s lungs is also now commodified.

Online and in-person breathwork sessions now abound, some charging hundreds of dollars to teach participants a skill most have already acquired as a prerequisite for life: how to breathe.

The claimed advantages vary from benefits for which there is solid evidence, such as stress relief, to more dubious ones: advertising copy for various courses includes promises participants will “access states of healing most people never touch”, “unlock your fullest human potential”, and “foster … deep personal growth”.

Is there truly a better way to breathe? Is there any evidence for breathwork’s purported benefits – or are the claims just full of hot air?

Breathwork as a wellness trend is difficult to precisely define, because there are “all sorts of different breathwork techniques and protocols that get popularised,” says Dr Vince Polito, a senior lecturer in the school of psychological sciences at Macquarie University.

“There genuinely are some physiological effects of changing your........

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