Can I Lower My Eye Pressure By Relaxed Breathing?

Today I compared several eye pressure measurements on the basis of a normal measurement vs. a measurement after 1-2 minutes of relaxed breathing. I wanted to see if my eye pressure is lower when I do simple deep breathing as a form of relaxation.

The deep breathing I did was very simple. I took normal breaths but I made sure I was breathing deeply with my belly (as opposed to shallow chest breathing) and I let myself relax as I exhaled. I did the relaxed breathing for about a minute -- or for up to two minutes if I felt like I needed the full two minutes to become relaxed. I was not performing any kind of meditation or other formal relaxation technique.

Throughout the day, I paired up nine different eye pressure exams. An eye pressure exam is a series of at least 3 intraocular pressure measurements for each eye. The first eye pressure exam was a normal check where I did not try to relax nor did I do any special breathing. The second eye pressure exam followed immediately. I started by doing 1-2 minutes of relaxed breathing as described above and then had my eye pressure checked with the same equipment and the same procedure used for the first eye pressure exam.

The results indicate that I can indeed lower my eye pressure simply by doing just a minute or two of relaxed breathing.

The results are highly statisticallly significant (p < 0.01) for each eye.

Here are the details:

The connection between breathing and eye pressure has been looked at many times. I am aware of several studies. One, showing a relationship between high resistance wind musical instruments (such as a trumpet) and IOP elevation can be found here. Another, showing that a simple alteration in breathing could signicantly lower IOP can be found here.