Your Body, Mind & Mood Run on Rhythms
- 22 October 2025
Everyone has 3 main rhythms that work together, like different instruments in a band. When they play in tune, life feels balanced.
- Biological Rhythm = The Body’s Clock
- Biochemical Rhythm = The Body’s Chemistry
- Psychological Rhythm =The Mind’s Tempo
When one goes off-beat, everything starts to feel 'off'.
In this three-part newsletter, you will learn how Breathing is The Bridge Between All Three.
When all three rhythms align, you start to notice:
- You fall asleep easier
- You wake up more refreshed
- Your mood feels steadier
1. What is our biological rythmn?
It's the body’s natural timing system.
It controls sleep, energy, temperature, hunger, and hormones.
It runs on mini (ultradian, approximately 90 minutes), daily (circadian, approximately 24 hours), and infradian cycles (longer than 24 hours, e.g., women's menstrual cycle, seasonal cycle).
- Morning: body temperature, cortisol, and alertness rise.
- Day: energy flows in 90-minute focus-and-rest waves.
- Night: melatonin rises, temperature drops, the body repairs.
When it’s off, you feel tired, wired, hungry at odd times, or can’t sleep properly.
What helps regulate these rythmns :
In chronobiology, cues such as light-dark cycles, meal timing, and physical activity are well-documented as primary ways to entrain internal clocks.
However, emerging research shows that Breathing is more than reflexive; it participates in our internal circadian system. Recent research emphasises how changes in breathing and oxygenation can influence our body’s clocks. This is particularly important to our therapists, especially those working in the field of respiratory medicine.
Cajochen, C. & Montagnese, S. (2025) ‘Stuck in time: The slow march of circadian medicine and how to speed it up’, Journal of Sleep Research, published online 23 February 2025. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.70011
Breathing varies depending on where we are in the biological cycle:
- Your breath is a rhythm you can control, unlike most other internal rhythms.
- By slowing, deepening, and especially breathing through the nose, you send vagal/parasympathetic signals to your brain and heart that tell your system to balance.
- This helps align autonomic timing (heart, blood pressure, hormones) with the larger circadian and ultradian cycles.
- Over time, consistent breathing retraining helps your rhythms re-synchronise, improving sleep, mood, focus, and health.
Breathing isn’t just something you do: it’s how you can tune your internal clocks.
Awareness in the field of respiratory is now of significant importance as much of the current research linking breathing and circadian rhythms comes from this field, especially studies on respiratory comorbidities such as:
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
- Sleep apnoea
- Asthma
- Hypoxia-related disorders (e.g., altitude, respiratory failure)
References:
Castillejos-López, C., Pérez-Padilla, R., Sánchez-Zárraga, M.E. and López-González, C. (2023) ‘Hypoxia induces alterations in the circadian rhythm in patients with chronic respiratory diseases’, Cells, 12(23), p. 2724. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12232724
Sartor, F., Fedele, M., Palombo, V., & Rizzo, P. (2024) ‘Circadian clock and hypoxia’, Cells, 13(6), p. 888. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/cells13060888
O’Connell, E.J., Martínez, C.A., & Cheong, A. (2020) ‘Out of breath, out of time: interactions between HIF and circadian rhythms’, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) – Molecular Cell Research, 1867(9), p. 118703. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamcr.2020.118703