Meditation may not calm everyone, expert says breathwork can worsen anxiety

Meditation is often sold like a universal calm button, but that promise breaks fast for people whose anxiety rises when they try to slow down. Dr. Sharadhi C, a consultant in psychiatry at Aster CMI Hospital in Bengaluru, says the goal is not to erase every thought, but to change your relationship with thoughts so attention, emotional balance, and self-awareness can grow. That distinction is the heart of the issue: some practices settle the system, while others can feel too activating for the wrong person at the wrong moment.

Not every practice fits every state

The practical split Dr. Sharadhi draws is simple. If you are dealing with acute anxiety, she points toward present-moment techniques such as guided breathing, grounding exercises, and body scan meditation. If the stress is more everyday and less acute, she says mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and simple breath awareness may be a better match.

That sorting matters because the meditation world often treats every technique as interchangeable. It is not. A technique that feels centering to one person can feel like pressure to another, especially when the body is already keyed up and the mind is scanning for danger. In that setting, the safer move is usually the less activating one, not the more intense one.

When breathwork can backfire

Breathwork sits in a tricky place inside the wellness conversation. It can be useful, but it is not automatically soothing, and the wrong style can worsen anxiety for some people. That is especially important for anyone who is already feeling flooded, because the point is to reduce activation, not add another layer of effort.

The sorting rule here is practical: if a practice makes you feel more anxious, not less, it is probably a mismatch. For someone in an anxious state, breath-focused work should stay gentle and observational rather than forceful or performance-driven. Dr. Sharadhi’s framing is a useful reset for anyone who has been told that more intensity means better results. In meditation, that is often exactly backwards.

What the safety data and usage trends show

The broader evidence supports both the promise and the caution. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says meditation and mindfulness have a history that goes back thousands of years in Eastern traditions, and they are generally considered low-risk. At the same time, the safety picture is not simple, because the data are still limited.

In a 2020 review of 83 studies involving 6,703 participants, 55 studies reported negative experiences related to meditation. About 8% of participants experienced a negative effect, most commonly anxiety and depression. That does not mean meditation is broadly unsafe, but it does mean the field has to stop pretending every experience is blissful or benign.

The same NCCIH overview also shows how mainstream these practices have become in the United States. Adult meditation use more than doubled, rising from 7.5% in 2002 to 17.3% in 2022. The growth helps explain the need for better sorting: more people are trying meditation, and more of them need a realistic guide to fit, not a one-size-fits-all sales pitch.

What breathwork studies do and do not prove

Research on breathwork is encouraging, but still uneven. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials searched multiple databases up to February 2022 and included 12 trials with 785 adults for stress outcomes. Overall, breathwork was associated with lower stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.

That said, the authors urged caution because many studies had moderate risk of bias and the evidence base was heterogeneous. In plain English, that means the signal looks promising, but the studies do not all line up cleanly enough to make breathwork a universal answer. The best reading is not “breathwork works for everyone,” but “breathwork may help some people under some conditions, and the field still needs stronger trials.”

A separate psychiatry review comes to a similar conclusion from another angle. It says evidence for mind-body interventions in anxiety disorders is still limited and inconsistent, even though these approaches are growing in popularity. The highest-quality data are strongest for yoga, mindfulness-based interventions, and applied relaxation, and the review says there is not yet enough evidence to recommend them as primary treatments on their own.

A safer way to choose your starting point

If you want a simple filter, start with your current state, not with what sounds most advanced.

• If you are acutely anxious, choose grounding, guided breathing, or a body scan before anything more activating.
• If you are stressed but not overwhelmed, try mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation, or simple breath awareness.
• If a technique leaves you more agitated, treat that as feedback, not failure, and switch to something gentler.
• If you are treating ongoing anxiety, keep mind-body practices in the support role rather than the lead role.

For busy professionals, the most useful reset is usually the shortest one that stays on the safe side. A 60-second check-in can be as simple as feeling your feet on the floor, noticing a few objects in the room, scanning the jaw and shoulders for tension, and then observing the breath without forcing it deeper or slower. The point is not to achieve a perfect meditative state in one minute. It is to interrupt the spiral without adding more strain.

Meditation does not have to fail just because it does not feel calming. The better question is whether the practice matches the nervous system you actually have in front of you. For some people, the answer is breathwork; for others, especially when anxiety is already high, the wiser first move is grounding, simplicity, and less effort.