Air Hunger Review: What The Breathwork Movie Gets Right, And What It Gets Wrong

Can the way you breathe make you calmer, faster and tougher? Air Hunger, the 2026 breathwork film, says yes. Some of it we agree with completely. Some of it we don’t teach, and the film itself shows why. Last updated: 31 October 2026.

Air Hunger breathwork film: the short answer

Air Hunger is a 2026 breathwork film about athletes, soldiers and scientists who use their breath to perform, recover and stay calm. It is beautifully made and well worth watching. It gets a lot right about carbon dioxide, nose breathing and calm under pressure. But it mixes many different techniques, and some, such as long sessions of fast, open-mouth breathing, we don’t teach, for good reasons the film itself points to.

This review in short

• What it is: an 87-minute Dutch documentary, on watch.airhunger.film and Prime Video.
• What it gets right: carbon dioxide matters, the nose is for breathing, calm wins fights.
• Where we differ: fast, deep, open-mouth breathing, and risky breath-holds.
• Many techniques, mixed results: “breathwork” covers very different methods, so results differ too.
• The science: slow breathing is well supported; extreme methods much less so.
• What we teach instead: slow, nasal, exhale-led yoga breathing (pranayama).

What is Air Hunger about?

The Air Hunger documentary is by Dutch filmmaker Bob van de Gronde, made by Eyeforce Studios over about three years. It came out on Prime Video in the Netherlands in May 2026 and went on sale worldwide in October 2026.

“Air hunger” is the feeling of needing to breathe. You feel it when you hold your breath, or when you run hard. The film’s idea is that if you learn to sit calmly with that feeling, you get stronger, calmer and faster.

It follows several people. A former US Marine Raider teaches athletes to stay calm underwater. A Dutch kickboxer trains with tape over his mouth. A journalist learns nose breathing before running 540 kilometres from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Scientists at the University of Sussex put people in a brain scanner while they breathe hard and fast. And a freediving coach trains American ski athletes to hold their breath.

Who is in the film?

The best-known name is Patrick McKeown, founder of Oxygen Advantage and author of a book of the same name. The director says he took the film’s title from McKeown’s book.

You also meet freediving coach Kirk Krack, who trained the cast of Avatar: The Way of Water; MMA champion Liz Carmouche; kickboxer Levi Rigters; journalist Tobias Mews; and the Sussex breathwork researcher Guy Fincham.

What does the film get right?

Quite a lot. Three things stand out, and they are things we teach too.

Carbon dioxide is not the enemy

Most people think breathing is all about getting more oxygen. The film explains why that’s only half the story.

The urge to breathe comes mostly from rising carbon dioxide, not from running out of oxygen. And your blood needs some carbon dioxide to let go of its oxygen where your muscles and brain need it. Kirk Krack explains this simply in the film.

So learning to stay calm as carbon dioxide rises is a real skill. In the yoga tradition, the gentle pauses after the breath (kumbhaka, or breath retention) have been taught for centuries to build exactly this kind of steady calm.

The nose is for breathing

Patrick McKeown’s section on functional breathing is the clearest part of the film. Functional breathing means breathing quietly, slowly and through the nose, using the diaphragm (the big breathing muscle under the ribs) rather than the upper chest.

He explains a simple self-check called the BOLT score. You breathe out normally, pinch your nose, and time how long until you first want to breathe. He also explains why the nose matters: it warms, moistens and filters the air, and it makes a gas called nitric oxide that helps open the airways.

Research backs part of this. In a 2025 study of 49 people doing hard cycling sprints, breathing through the nose felt easier and people recovered faster, with the same power as mouth breathing.

Calm wins

The most moving moment for us is a fight scene. Liz Carmouche describes being deep in the fourth round, tired, cut and under pressure. She could hear her opponent gasping. She slowed her own breathing, relaxed her arms, and won.

That is the whole point of breath training, for a fighter or for anyone in a stressful job. It’s not about how much air you move. It’s about staying in charge of yourself.

Where does Flametree differ from the film?

We don’t teach fast, open-mouth breathing

A large part of the film shows 25 minutes of fast, deep breathing through the mouth, sometimes called conscious connected breathing. People in the film describe big emotional releases. Some say it changed their lives, and we don’t doubt their experience.

But we don’t teach it, for three reasons the film itself shows:

1. It cuts blood flow to the brain. The film’s own scientists explain that blowing off carbon dioxide narrows the blood vessels in the brain. Their scans showed less blood flow across the whole brain.
2. It can be hard on the body. The man in the lab gets hand cramps and sweats heavily. One scientist says blood oxygen readings fell as low as 67% after the breathing stopped. They called it surprising.
3. The evidence for extra benefit is thin. The same Sussex team ran a trial with 200 people. Three weeks of fast breathing with long breath-holds was no better for stress than a gentle placebo breathing practice. Both groups improved.

We agree here with James Nestor, author of Breath: most of us already breathe too much, too fast, and through the mouth. More of that is not what we need.

Extreme breath-holds are for experts with a safety team

The film is clear about danger. Kirk Krack warns that fast breathing before a breath-hold in water can make you black out, and that you should never practise alone. We agree completely. Never hold your breath underwater after fast breathing, and never practise breath-holds in water on your own.

The film also shows a ski mountaineer who did two months of breath-hold training. At his retest, after a few breath-holds, he fainted on the treadmill. And when the scientists measured the ski team’s fitness (VO2 max, the most oxygen the body can use), the breath-hold group did no better than the group that didn’t train their breath.

So breath-hold training may help some elite athletes, with experts watching. It is not something to try at home after watching a movie. And even for athletes, we think there are better and safer ways.

Many techniques, mixed results

The film shows why “breathwork” is too loose a word to judge on its own. Air Hunger mixes many methods. Some are taught in a strong, forceful style, close to the bellows breath (bhastrika). Some use long breath-holds (kumbhaka), and some don’t. Some are slow and nasal. They do very different things in the body. Some are good, and some, in our view, are not.

Many people in the film found parts of it useful, and we take them at their word. But a result for one technique, good or bad, does not tell us about another. When a study of “breathwork” or “meditation” finds no benefit, the first question is: what exactly was taught, how, and by whom?

Pranayama, mindfulness and breathwork overlap like a Venn diagram. Where they overlap, most of them calm the body and mind, and seem to help shift the brain out of fight-or-flight. Forceful breaths such as bhastrika are the exception. Where they differ, you have to look at what was actually done before being sure what a study tested.

Pranayama taught by a trained Iyengar teacher is a known method, taught to a known standard. That is the difference we come back to across our encyclopaedia of yoga for health conditions. Read more in Yoga or Iyengar yoga: why the difference matters in the research.

What does the science say about breathwork?

Here is a plain summary of what modern research has tested so far, and what practice already knows.

Breathing style	What research shows
Slow breathing (well under 10 breaths a minute)	Well supported. A review of 223 studies found it reliably calms the nervous system (raises heart rate variability).
Nose breathing during exercise	Some support. Feels easier, faster recovery, same power.
Breathing retraining for asthma (Buteyko style)	Some support as an add-on to usual care: better control, less reliever use.
Breathwork for stress, all styles	Some support. A 2023 review of 12 trials found a small to medium drop in stress.
Fast breathing with long breath-holds	Weak. No better than placebo breathing in a 200-person trial.
Mouth taping at night	Weak. A 2025 review found little benefit, and possible harm if the nose is blocked.
Breath-holds before swimming underwater	A known danger. Linked to drowning.

Much of what yoga teaches about the breath is known from long practice, and research is still catching up. Not yet tested is not the same as not working.

What does Flametree teach instead?

We teach pranayama: slow, nasal, mostly exhale-led yoga breathing. It does what the best moments of Air Hunger praise (calm under pressure, faster recovery, comfort with carbon dioxide, better focus) without the risks of the extreme methods.

Flametree teaches in the Iyengar yoga style. During the 20th century, Mr BKS Iyengar was the major person who codified traditional Indian yoga, through his seminal books and widespread teaching, and he pioneered the use of props. His style is sometimes called modern classical yoga. His book Light on Pranayama is still a standard guide.

Here are the five breaths we teach most:

1. Victorious Breath (Ujjayi), also called Ocean Breath. Slow, smooth, through the nose, with a soft sound in the throat.
2. Interrupted Breath (Viloma), also called Staircase Breathing. The breath taken in or let out in small steps, with short pauses.
3. Alternate Nostril Breathing (Nadi Sodhana). Breathing through one nostril at a time, slowly and evenly.
4. Humming Breath (Bhramari). A long, gentle hum on the out-breath.
5. Shining Skull Breath (Kapalabhati), the gentle way. Short, soft out-breaths with a passive in-breath. As we teach it, it is gentle and exhale-based, nothing like hyperventilation.

Kirk Krack describes a lovely test in the film: breathe out so gently that you would make a candle flicker at arm’s length, but not blow it out. That is the feel of good pranayama.

Is pranayama good for sport?

Yes. Slow, nasal breathing is what helps athletes recover, stay calm and focus. That’s what the kickboxer in the film uses after training, and what Liz Carmouche uses in the ring.

Mr Iyengar taught cricketers, footballers and other athletes. His book Yoga For Sports uses Victorious Breath to help players settle. In a 2025 trial with 88 recreational athletes, 30 days of pranayama and meditation lowered stress and raised mindfulness. In another, with 92 young archers, a yoga program that included breathing improved attention.

So our view is simple. The breathing we teach is even better for performance, because it builds calm and control without the risks.

Should you watch Air Hunger?

Yes, if you’re curious about breathing. As a breathwork documentary it’s gripping, beautifully filmed, and it will make you notice your breath for days afterwards. Watch it with three things in mind:

• Take the nose breathing and the calm. That’s the best of the film.
• Be careful with the fast, open-mouth breathing. It’s not needed, and it carries risks.
• Never copy the breath-holds in water. The film’s own experts say so.

Then come and learn to breathe well, slowly and safely, with a teacher.

Learn to breathe well at Flametree

You don’t need to hold your breath underwater or breathe hard for 25 minutes to get the benefits Air Hunger is chasing. You need slow, steady practice with a good teacher. New to Flametree, or away 3 months or more? 2 free classes, then 10 at half price, in Darwin or LIVE online. See the class times, or our pranayama classes.

Back to Films About Yoga And Breathwork.

Air Hunger: questions people ask

What is the Air Hunger breathwork film?

Air Hunger is a 2026 documentary by Dutch director Bob van de Gronde about athletes, soldiers and scientists who use breathing to perform and recover. It runs for 87 minutes and is available at watch.airhunger.film and on Prime Video in some countries.

Is Patrick McKeown in Air Hunger?

Yes. Patrick McKeown of Oxygen Advantage explains functional breathing, nasal breathing and the BOLT test. The director says the film’s title comes from McKeown’s book.

What is functional breathing?

Functional breathing means breathing quietly, slowly and through the nose, using the diaphragm rather than the upper chest. It is close to how yoga has long taught the breath at rest.

Is fast breathwork (hyperventilation) safe?

Fast, deep breathing lowers carbon dioxide and reduces blood flow to the brain, and it can cause dizziness, tingling and cramps. Done before a breath-hold in water it can cause blackout and drowning. We don’t teach it.

Why do some breathwork studies find no benefit?

Because “breathwork” covers very different techniques: fast and forceful, with or without long breath-holds, or slow and nasal. A trial of one technique tells us about that technique, not about breathing practice in general. Pranayama taught by a trained Iyengar teacher is a known method, taught to a known standard.

How is pranayama different from breathwork in Air Hunger?

Pranayama is slow, nasal and mostly exhale-led, with gentle pauses, learnt step by step from a trained teacher. Much of the breathwork in the film is fast and through the mouth, or involves long breath-holds for performance.

Can breathing exercises help athletes?

Yes. Slow, nasal breathing helps athletes recover, stay calm under pressure and focus. Research supports slow breathing for calm, and nose breathing for easier, more comfortable effort.

Where can I learn pranayama in Darwin?

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches pranayama and breath meditation classes in Darwin, at Woolner and Coolalinga, and LIVE online across Australia. Beginners are welcome.

Sources: Air Hunger (Eyeforce Studios, 2026). Fincham and colleagues, Scientific Reports 2024 (200 adults). Fincham and colleagues, Scientific Reports 2023 (review, 12 trials, 785 adults). Laborde and colleagues, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 2022 (223 studies). Levenez and colleagues, Sports 2025 (49 people). Rhee and colleagues, PLOS One 2025 (mouth taping). US CDC, MMWR 2015 (breath-holding and drowning). Saraswati and colleagues, Cureus 2025 (88 athletes). Baishya and colleagues, International Journal of Yoga 2025 (92 archers).

General information about a film and about yoga breathing, not medical advice. Flametree Yoga Studio, Darwin and LIVE online.