Air Hunger, the Alexander Technique
and the Somatic Dimension of Healthy Breathing
- Last reviewed: May 2026
Editorial Note
This article is published as a contributed perspective by Simon Spire and reflects his professional perspective on air hunger and breathing patterns. BreathFinder presents a range of perspectives across breathwork and related practices. It is shared to support understanding within the wider landscape of breathing approaches, rather than to present any single method as definitive. This piece is grounded in the Alexander Technique and related approaches.
About the Author
Simon Spire is a licensed psychotherapist, contemplative teacher, and founder of Liberating the Natural Breath and the Air Hunger Help Community. More information can be found at AirHungerHelp.com.
The Inherent Resilience of Breathing
To most people, the term “breathwork” brings to mind practices that use the breath for a specific purpose: emotional healing, shifts in psychological state, or physical well-being, to name a few. When breathing is healthy and resilient, we can and have for thousands of years intentionally used the breath as a powerful tool. But what do we do when breathing itself becomes the problem? What if the individual is unable to use their breathing intentionally because it has become profoundly disturbed — the natural rhythm and movement no longer able to operate in an inherently coordinated way, the individual suffering from a persistent perception that they can’t get a full breath?
This is the arena in which I operate at the Air Hunger Help Community. Since 2018 we have run online group programs, and now a live community with weekly events and a 10-week course, to help those who have been pulled into the relentless vortex of chronic breathing tension. In this respect, my work does not fit neatly into the field of breathwork: rather than using the breath to produce a result, we focus on restoring healthy breathing at a fundamental level for those who are suffering severely from a pronounced disruption to their natural breathing rhythms — a condition we call air hunger.
There are, however, important ways in which the work we do helping people restore their naturally resilient breathing using principles of the Alexander Technique has something valuable to offer those who have never experienced air hunger: it illuminates the intricate dynamics of our body’s natural breathing coordination by demonstrating what happens when things go wrong and how to find our way back to the ease and comfort of our inherently resilient breathing.
Table of Contents
When Breathing Becomes the Problem
One of the greatest lessons this work demonstrates time and again is that the body knows how to breathe. As obvious as this sounds, the majority of people who find their way to our program have already tried imposing numerous breathing techniques on top of their disordered breathing in an attempt to correct it. This does, of course, make sense at first glance: something is going wrong in your body, so you feel the need to do something to fix it.
I know firsthand how self-evident this reasoning seems: pursuing some innocent notion of “optimal health,” I met with a renowned breathing specialist as a teenager and was taught what’s commonly known as “diaphragmatic breathing” or “belly-breathing.” Being a conscientious over-doer by nature, I diligently put this into practice, excited for the benefits from my superior and “correct” breathing. Unfortunately, I now recognize this as one of the central factors that led to my development of severe air hunger two years later.
During my own four-year struggle with air hunger (approximately 2000 – 2003), I explored every breathing method I could find, working with breathing experts, doctors, medical specialists, and alternative health practitioners in search of relief from the constant sensation of not being able to get a full breath.
As I was attempting to pile solutions on top of the problem, it didn’t really occur to me how odd this approach was from a certain perspective. Did my body really need all of this additional work to be able to breathe in a healthy way? Didn’t it used to breathe just fine on its own? Isn’t breathing one of the most fundamental functions it has evolved to fulfill? Does it really need so much assistance in order to do that?
This seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time I had become so entangled in the idea of “correct breathing” being the answer that I simply kept trying to correct my breathing. Furthermore, if I ever tried to simply allow my breathing to happen on its own without my conscious involvement, its natural coordination had already been so disrupted through my interventions that it was unable to function smoothly anymore, reinforcing the view that I had to double-down on correcting my breathing technique.
Instead of imposing more effortful breathing interventions on top of my already disordered breathing patterns, what I needed was to understand how I was getting in the way of what the body inherently does so well without our conscious involvement: easeful, coordinated, resilient breathing.
What I needed was two things: first, an appreciation for the body’s natural breathing dynamics, so they could be understood, respected, and worked with; and, second, a way to recognize and release the habitual interference disrupting that inherent coordination.
The Alexander Technique gave me both.
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The Path to Resilient Breathing
Two decades later, it’s the principles and practices of the Alexander Technique that form the basis of our work in the Air Hunger Help Community today as we help those struggling with the constant suffering of air hunger to restore their naturally resilient breathing. Instead of imposing patterns and techniques on top of their already compromised breathing, we work instead to remove blockages, impediments, and habitual interference with the body’s natural breathing dynamics. We restore the supportive structure of the body so that the breath has the space and support it needs to move freely and fully. And we reawaken the natural movement and resilience of the body’s inherent breathing coordination.
After 25 years of seeking to understand healthy breathing and over a decade collaborating with breathing-specialized Alexander Technique teachers to help those with breathing pattern disorders, I’ve seen how this deliberate and patient work of honoring and restoring the body’s naturally resilient breathing is the key to healing air hunger and reclaiming the ease that is our birthright.
It is also, I believe, the key to the “optimal breathing” I was clumsily pursuing as a teenager. Our body’s naturally resilient breathing is what provides the supportive foundation for whatever other breathing practices we might choose to adopt for our own physical, psychological, or spiritual development. As we attend to this fundamental layer of our well-being, everything else can flow with greater ease and coordination.
Having provided some context for our mission at the Air Hunger Help Community, I’ll turn now to the particulars of air hunger and how to most effectively resolve it.
What is Air Hunger?
Air hunger is a term used to describe the distressing feeling of consistently being unable to get a full breath. As such, it more accurately describes a cluster of symptoms than the underlying condition. People experiencing air hunger typically say things like:
“I feel like I can’t breathe;”
“I struggle to get a full breath;”
“I’m constantly sighing or yawning, but this no longer reliably provides the relief of a satisfying breath;”
“I feel like I’m having a panic attack;”
“I can’t get enough air in my lungs.”
Of course, anyone experiencing such symptoms should seek medical evaluation. Most people dealing with what we call non-medical air hunger, however, have usually already done so, often consulting multiple professionals — only to be told there’s nothing medically wrong with them or that they’re simply experiencing anxiety.
But when these potentially debilitating symptoms persist month after month, the reassurance that there’s probably nothing medically wrong with you ceases to provide much comfort. And if you try telling someone who feels they can’t breathe that they’re merely anxious, they may understandably respond, “Of course I’m anxious; I feel like I’m suffocating.”
There are some variations in terminology applied to this cluster of prolonged, distressed breathing symptoms. Medical professionals might, for instance, name it Hyperventilation Syndrome or a Breathing Pattern Disorder. It’s important to recognize that none of these terms — including air hunger — are precisely defined diagnostic categories or technical in nature. Different people use these terms in different ways, and they can become catch-all phrases for breathing difficulties or shortness of breath.
It’s also important to understand that what I’m referring to as air hunger is not an experience that is caused by an identifiable medical condition. Needless to say, there are countless medical conditions that can affect breathing. If that’s the case, then you enlist medical help and tend to the medical condition as best you can.
But one of the defining characteristics of what we’ve come to refer to as “non-medical air hunger” is that it’s not caused by a medical condition. It can’t be traced to any diagnosable or treatable medical dysfunction, hence doctors’ frequent response that there’s nothing wrong with the patient — from a medical perspective, there’s not. The root cause of the issue isn’t medical in the traditional sense; rather, it has to do with how the individual is inhabiting their physicality, how they’re using their body and nervous system, and the resulting ways they are unconsciously restricting and compromising the inherent coordination of their breathing. So from a medical perspective, “there’s nothing to see here, folks.” From a somatic and psychological perspective, there’s a lot to see.
So if air hunger describes the experience, what is the underlying pattern that gives rise to it?
What Causes Air Hunger?
The symptoms of air hunger are ultimately caused by a disruption of the body’s natural breathing rhythms and coordination. When breathing coordination is compromised, the full and integrated movement of the ribs and accessory breathing muscles throughout the torso gets restricted, which in turn limits the free and full movement of the primary breathing muscle — our diaphragm.
To compensate for this restricted movement, people begin breathing more effortfully with their accessory breathing muscles, especially the chest and upper back muscles, often getting increasingly expanded in their upper chest area as they reach higher and higher for the sensation of a full breath — which is increasingly achieved only through a forced yawn or sigh.
While these strategies may offer temporary relief, they tend to reinforce the underlying disruption rather than resolve it.
The Air Hunger Loop
As compensatory breathing patterns become more established, they further interfere with the natural coordination of the diaphragm, ribs, and the accessory breathing muscles in the abdomen, chest, back, and shoulders. This creates a self-einforcing cycle that we refer to as the air hunger loop.
The more a person tries to control or force their breathing, the more the system becomes strained. The diaphragm, ribs, and surrounding muscles lose their natural responsiveness, and breathing becomes increasingly effortful and unreliable. This can lead to feeling trapped in a knot of tension and struggle as the individual relies increasingly on the upper chest, jaw, neck, shoulders, or belly to forcibly generate the movement of the breath that they no longer sufficiently experience from their inherent breathing coordination.
These efforts may eventually hit a wall, leaving the person with a persistent sense that they cannot get a satisfying breath. People in this situation often find themselves perpetually reaching for air, as we call it, in a futile attempt to satisfy the urge for the artificially full breath they have become dependent on. Furthermore, a number of self-einforcing dynamics kick in, including the potential disruption of the body’s oxygen and carbon dioxide balance, making it all the more difficult to extricate oneself from this loop without experienced guidance.
At this point, it can feel as though no matter what you try, nothing resolves the issue. You don’t know how you got here, and you can’t seem to find any way out of this loop in which you’ve become so entangled.
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The Root Causes of Disrupted Breathing
While the experience of air hunger can feel sudden and overwhelming, the underlying disruption in breathing coordination usually develops over time. There are many possible roads that lead to this pattern of breathing dysfunction, but the disruptive patterns at the root of the issue tend to fall into three main categories:
Habitual patterns of use: First, there are the habitual ways we inhabit and use our body on a day-to-day basis that can impede the optimal movement and coordination of our breath. Examples range from introducing a lot of effort into our breathing to unconsciously introducing rigidity, holding, or slouching into certain everyday activities or into our default posture.
Accumulated tension and restriction: Over time, these habitual patterns can lead to a build-up of muscular tension and misalignment throughout the body. This may affect the upper back, ribs, chest, shoulders, neck, jaw, tongue, abdomen, and hips, often without the individual being consciously aware of it. These restrictions can significantly limit the natural movement and coordination of the breath.
One visible way that the effects of these first two categories can be observed is in people’s postural habits, whether sitting or standing. The trained eye (or hand) can recognize habits of holding, collapse, restriction, and compensatory stabilization that work against the skeleton’s and musculature’s naturally resilient scaffolding, thus undermining the resilience of the breath over time.
Nervous system dysregulation: Stress, anxiety, and trauma can alter breathing patterns and contribute to ongoing tension in the body, further disrupting the natural rhythm of the breath and reinforcing the cycle of dysfunction.
These categories of interference tend to be interconnected and easily feed into one another, gradually shaping breathing patterns in ways that create vulnerability and undermine resilience. Combine two or three of these categories for a few weeks or a few years, and what you may end up with is someone who is eventually pulled into the orbit of the air hunger loop.
The Onset of Air Hunger
Just as the preconditions for air hunger can quietly develop in a multitude of ways over a period of years, the actual onset of air hunger can be triggered by any number of events. For some, it follows a sudden event such as a panic attack, acute stress, or the loss of a loved one. For others, it develops gradually over months or years through the accumulation of the patterns described above. Additional long-term sources of disruption, such as chronic stress, back pain, or asthma may further exacerbate the escalating level of interference.
What’s become clear to us after years of working with people who experience serious air hunger is that, whatever the triggering event, the vulnerability in the individual’s breathing usually developed over a period of years as their inherent breathing coordination was gradually constrained and compromised. In these cases, it may have been only a matter of time before some period of heightened physical or psychological stress pushed the system over a tipping point and into the downward spiral of the air hunger loop.
Carbon Dioxide Tolerance and Air Hunger
One common explanation for air hunger focuses on dysregulation of carbon dioxide and oxygen levels — particularly chronically low CO₂ due to habitual over-breathing — which can alter blood pH and intensify the drive to breathe. In this account, the sensation of air hunger is primarily explained in terms of neural perception, particularly the brain’s response to changes in carbon dioxide levels or to a mismatch between the drive to breathe and the air actually received. While this framing captures important physiological mechanisms involved in breathing, it does not fully account for the broader causal chain or for the self-reinforcing dynamics at play in persistent air hunger, particularly the role of mechanical and coordinative disruption within the breathing system itself.
From a somatic perspective, this emphasis on carbon dioxide dysregulation and over-breathing can place disproportionate weight on downstream expressions of the true problem. While these factors can play a real role, they do not fully explain why dysfunctional breathing patterns arise and persist. Attempts to correct CO₂ levels or breathing rate through techniques such as carbon dioxide tolerance training can potentially provide partial or temporary relief, but they fall short of lasting resolution when the underlying coordinative patterns remain unchanged. Moreover, such approaches run the very real risk of inadvertently reinforcing the problem by encouraging effortful control of breathing that further disrupts natural rhythms and increases compensatory muscular tension.
A fuller understanding of breathing function suggests that over-breathing and carbon dioxide imbalance are best understood as downstream expressions of a deeper disruption. From this perspective, habitual patterns of interference with the body’s natural breathing coordination precede and sustain both the behavioral and physiological features of air hunger. Addressing these underlying patterns is therefore essential for lasting change.
Neural Perception and Air Hunger
This same distinction applies to the experience of air hunger itself. In many contemporary accounts, the sensation of air hunger is primarily explained in terms of neural perception. While this model identifies an important pathway through which breathing discomfort can arise, it does not fully account for the significant role of mechanical and coordinative disruption within the breathing system. In our experience working with individuals, there is often a more direct and observable pathway contributing to the distress.
Restrictions in rib mobility, reduced diaphragmatic excursion, and increasing reliance on accessory musculature can significantly impair the body’s ability to generate an efficient, coordinated breath. As these compensatory patterns intensify and individuals get trapped in the “reaching for air” pattern described above, the structural conditions necessary for a full, responsive breath to occur are undermined. In such cases, the feeling of not getting enough air may reflect not only a neural signal, but a direct consequence of compromised breathing coordination.
Put simply, a big part of the reason for the subjective sensation among air hunger-sufferers that “something is wrong with my breathing” may well be that something is actually wrong with the functioning of their breathing. The common trap that follows is to assume that the solution is to “fix” one’s breathing through further effort and control.
The deeper insight is simpler: the body already knows how to breathe. The task is not to impose a better pattern, but to understand and release the patterns of interference that prevent natural coordination from expressing itself.
As both the compensatory patterns and the underlying sources of interference are addressed, the forces driving carbon dioxide dysregulation subside, and the system is increasingly able to reorganize itself toward a more natural equilibrium without the need for ongoing conscious control. In this way, changes at the level of coordination are reflected across the entire system — shaping breathing patterns, physiology, and perception. This reflects a systems-level understanding of breathing, in which coordination, compensation, physiology, and perception are interdependent, but operate at different points within the causal chain. Working at the level of coordination allows the system as a whole to rebalance, rather than attempting to manage its downstream effects directly.
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Somatic Disruption and Self-Reinforcing Air Hunger Dynamics
Disrupted breathing coordination tends to give rise to several dynamics that feed a self-reinforcing cycle. First, individuals experience a subjective sense of not being able to breathe freely or get a full breath, which leads to compensatory patterns. Second, the breathing system comes under increasing strain as it attempts to meet the body’s needs through inefficient coordination, further driving compensatory breathing patterns. Third, these compensatory efforts often alter oxygen and carbon dioxide balance, further intensifying the drive toward effortful breathing and thus reinforcing the cycle.
Over time, these dynamics can take on a life of their own. Even when stress, anxiety, or other primarily psychological factors are responsible for the initial trigger, the physical patterns of disrupted breathing can become self-sustaining and persist independently of the original cause.
Understanding the primary role of structure, movement, and coordination in breathing is therefore crucial. When the underlying disruption is recognized and addressed, the self-reinforcing cycle can begin to unwind, and the conditions for natural, resilient breathing can re-emerge.
So, what causes air hunger? At its core, it is the disruption of the body’s natural breathing coordination due to accumulated tension and interference. This is why, within the Air Hunger Help Community, we often refer to the condition as chronic breathing tension.
What is the Alexander Technique?
The work we do in the Air Hunger Help Community and through our process, the Liberating the Natural Breath (LNB) method of Resilient Breathing, is based primarily on the principles and practices of the Alexander Technique, with additional understandings drawn from Carl Stough’s work with Breathing Coordination and Jessica Wolf’s the Art of Breathing.
The Alexander Technique is an approach to restoring the natural ease, efficiency, and effectiveness of the body’s state and movement that was developed by F. M. Alexander (1869–1955). It is a somatic and educational approach that empowers the student to understand and sense the ways they interfere with their body’s inherent state of ease, coordination, and resilience. This enables the student to shift their habits and support their system’s return to natural alignment.
The actual activity of the Alexander Technique has more to do with undoing the unrecognized patterns of effort and compensation that have been placed upon the body’s optimal functioning than it does with learning “better breathing techniques” to layer on top of the underlying dysfunction. In fact, this is one of the fundamental discoveries of Alexander’s method: that when people try to fix the negative results of their unconscious habits, they inevitably end up creating further disruptions to the system’s coordination, thus making the problem worse.
Instead, what’s required is to recognize and unwind the underlying disruptions and limitations, thereby creating the space for the system to return to its inherent organization and ease. Within the LNB framework, the principles and practices of the Alexander Technique are tailored specifically to people dealing with Air Hunger. (Learn more about
the Alexander Technique as applied to breathing in BreathFinder’s article on the method.)
What is the LNB Method of Resilient Breathing?
The LNB Method of Resilient Breathing addresses disordered breathing patterns by guiding people back to their embodiment, back to their grounding, back to the inherent intelligence of their breathing, and back to what it means to be at home again in their body.
A key pattern that must be tended to early on is the stubborn habit of efforting for an artificially full breath (the reaching for air compulsion described above). This pattern is often deeply engrained and reinforced by the very strategies that people use to try to fix their breathing, making it a challenging one to untangle. For this reason, it cannot be addressed in isolation. The broader context of the individual’s breathing, embodiment, and nervous system must also be taken into account.
The most effective approach is to respect the various dimensions of interference at play and understand the conditions that gave rise to them. We can then gradually reduce the layers of interference that have built up in the system. In the LNB Method, we use a framework called the four domains of change to help illuminate the main categories of disruption to the body’s inherent coordination. We then use Alexander-inspired somatic practices, breathing awareness practices, and reminders that can be incorporated into everyday life to guide people through gradually releasing these patterns. At the same time, the breath is not forced into a new pattern, but gently invited to re-establish its own natural rhythm and movement.
As this process unfolds through three broad stages, breathing steadily regains its responsiveness and adaptability. While decisively clearing the Stage 1 habit of reaching for air is a significant milestone for anyone in our program, much of the more subtle and liberating restoration takes place in Stage 2, where the focus is on restoring movement and peeling back deeper layers of physical restriction in the breath. Stage 3 is the category we use to describe truly liberated and resilient breathing.
The Air Hunger Help Community and LNB Program Overview
This process forms the basis of our work in the Air Hunger Help Community and program. The primary tools and principles of the program are all taught within the 15 modules of our structured 10-week course. However, it’s the weekly live community coaching sessions, special guest instructors, and special topic workshops that often play a pivotal role in catalyzing members’ progress. A three-month membership includes lifelong access to the core 15 LNB modules, and many members choose to continue with a monthly membership to remain involved in the full community and the resources it provides.
For people who are seeking more individual support, we also provide resources for meeting one-to-one with a local Alexander Technique teacher, a somatic practitioner from another modality, or an LNB practitioner. When combined with the breathing-oriented guidance of the LNB program that is tailored specifically to air hunger, this optional in-person support can be beneficial in some cases.
Coming Home to Your Resilient Breathing
Resilient breathing is the name we give to the body’s naturally coordinated breathing. Your natural breathing is resilient in its responsiveness, its adaptability, its buoyancy, and its dynamic movement. It’s also resilient in its ability to reestablish its natural coordination after a period of interference. This is something that those recovering from air hunger learn to navigate: during the process of restoring healthy breathing, it’s not unusual to sometimes slip back into more disrupted breathing patterns. One of the skills that becomes essential throughout the journey is learning how to return to naturally resilient breathing sooner rather than later.
Although getting through air hunger is not typically a quick fix and usually requires some patience and commitment, it can be a profoundly rewarding journey. The value of reclaiming the birthrights of free, easeful breathing and of once again feeling at home in one’s body cannot be overstated. The journey can often become one of learning to authentically inhabit one’s body, one’s nervous system, and one’s whole self, and in this sense it’s not unusual to hear people express surprise at the benefits they’ve received from the journey that go well beyond comfortable breathing.
Ultimately, the journey from air hunger to resilient breathing is one of restoring our disrupted relationship with our embodied nature and our innate intelligence. It’s a journey of learning to trust our own nature and listen to the inherent movement toward coherence that is in the nature of our body — and, perhaps, in the nature of life itself — if we can learn to let it show us the way.
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BreathFinder Editorial Team
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are for informational purposes only. This content is not intended as medical advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional before participating in any breathwork practices and review all relevant guidance and warnings.
