When You Can't Get a Full Breath: An Exercise for Air Hunger
12/06/2026 – This blog post builds on the exercise originally posted on 04/11/2021
Do you know that feeling of not being able to get a full, satisfying breath, even right after you have taken one? You breathe in, and somehow it does not quite land. You try again, and it still feels incomplete. That sensation has a name. It is called air hunger.
This feeling can show up when you are about to sing, or simply while you are sitting at your desk. It easily happens when you are dealing with stress, like performance nerves. It also matters if you are hypermobile, or living with a viral illness like long COVID, or think you need to take a huge gulp of air before every line you sing or speak.
Air hunger is a breathing sensation. It is more about how your breathing feels than about a mechanical problem in your lungs. And often, the most helpful thing you can do is NOT a breathing exercise. For many of us, reaching for a deliberate breath makes the feeling worse rather than better. So instead of adding more focus on breathing, we are going to take a little away.
This post shares a gentle exercise for air hunger that I have used with singers and speakers for years, and a little further down you will find a short video where I walk you through it. It is not a dramatic technique, and it asks very little of you.
What is air hunger?
When the feeling comes from your breathing pattern, rather than from a medical condition like a heart or lung disease, it is usually a sign that you are breathing TOO MUCH, not too little.
Hypermobility or long COVID can genuinely feed air hunger, and yet the air hunger that comes with them is still mostly this breathing-pattern kind, rather than a warning sign of heart or lung disease. So even though your hypermobility or long COVID is a condition in its own right, this explanation very likely includes you, and there is more on it further down.
The mechanism underneath is the same for everyone. When we over-breathe, we breathe out too much carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is not just waste: your body needs a certain level of it to release oxygen to your cells. So when it drops too low, less oxygen actually reaches them, even though you are breathing more, not less.
This is also why your oxygen levels can read perfectly normal while you still feel breathless. Your lungs are not failing. Your breathing has simply drifted from what your body needs, and your nervous system can read that discomfort as a need for even more air. It becomes a loop, and the very thing we reach for to break it is usually what keeps it going.
First: A note on safety
This post is about the kind of air hunger that grows from a breathing pattern, and that kind responds beautifully to gentleness. Air hunger that is a signal of something else does not, and the difference is important.
So please treat new, sudden, or severe breathlessness as a reason to see a doctor rather than to reach for an exercise. The same goes if your breathlessness arrives at rest for no clear reason, or comes alongside chest pain or pressure, a racing or irregular heartbeat, dizziness, or fainting. Those are moments your body is asking for medical eyes, and getting them is the responsible, self-respecting thing to do. Sudden, severe breathlessness, especially with chest pain, deserves urgent care rather than wait-and-see.
Air hunger after a virus
For some people, air hunger arrives with an illness and then “decides to stay”. You had a virus, often COVID, and weeks or months later the infection itself is long gone, and yet the breath still does not feel right.
In many of these cases, the lungs and heart are not damaged. The breathlessness is real, the standard tests come back normal, and that mismatch can be deeply frustrating. What is usually happening instead is the same drifted, over-breathing pattern described above, one that settled in around the time you were ill. Researchers describe part of it as the body holding onto a memory of effortful breathing from the infection, a pattern the nervous system keeps running even after it is no longer needed.
Gently retraining the breathing pattern, letting the breath resettle rather than forcing it, has been shown to ease this kind of breathlessness, and the exercise further down is a way in.
Why air hunger is so common in hypermobile bodies
Just as air hunger can settle in after a virus, it is also especially common in hypermobile bodies. Your air hunger is genuinely not all in your head, and it is not simply nerves or bad posture. And unlike a pattern that arrives with an illness, hypermobility builds a few physical reasons in from the very start, woven into your connective tissue itself.
- A less stable ribcage. Your ribs rely on cartilage and ligaments to stay supported while still moving with every breath. In hypermobility that tissue is more lax, so the ribcage is a less stable base, and ribs can move too much or even slip and sublux. Rib subluxations and costochondritis (irritation of the rib cartilage) are common, and because deep breaths can become uncomfortable, it is natural to start breathing in a smaller, guarded way without realising it.
- A diaphragm working with looser tissue. The same laxity can reach the diaphragm itself, and studies have measured reduced strength in the muscles you breathe in with among people with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos (hEDS), and altered diaphragm mechanics linked to the stretchier connective tissue. The engine of your breath can simply be working with less support.
- A fuzzier sense of your own breathing. This one matters a great deal. Research has found that people with hEDS perceive their lung volume less accurately, so your body’s internal read (interoception) on how much it is breathing can be less reliable. When those signals are less clear, the nervous system has a harder time settling the breath, and the feeling of “not enough air” can take hold more easily.
- Dysautonomia. Hypermobility frequently comes with dysautonomia such as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), which is itself linked to hyperventilation, breath-holding and rapid, shallow breathing. So the system that runs your breathing on autopilot can be part of the picture.
Two things follow from this. First, several of these causes are physical, even mechanical, which is why a gentle awareness exercise is one useful piece rather than a cure on its own. If rib instability or breathing-muscle weakness is part of your picture, a physiotherapist who truly understands hypermobility belongs alongside it. And second, more encouragingly: since accurately sensing your own breath is often the very thing that is harder in a hypermobile body, a soft, unforced practice of tuning back in is especially worth having.
Before we get to that, it helps to understand why the obvious response, simply breathing harder, so often makes air hunger worse.
(And if you want to learn more about hypermobility, read my blog post Hypermobile Singers: From Pretty Impressive to Pretty Painful)
Why does breathing harder make air hunger worse?
When you feel as though you cannot get a full breath, the instinct is obvious and almost irresistible: pull in a big one. Breathe harder, breathe deeper, try to top yourself up. It is exactly what the feeling seems to be asking for.
And it is what tends to keep the feeling going. A big, effortful breath is simply more breathing, and more breathing lowers your carbon dioxide further, which is the very thing driving the sense of not enough air. So the rescue breath deepens the loop instead of breaking it.
There is a second layer too. The more closely you watch and manage each breath, the more effortful and unfamiliar breathing starts to feel. Your body is built to run your breath beautifully without supervision, and stepping in to control it tends to interfere rather than help. For some people, focused breathing exercises can even increase the unease rather than settle it.
So the way through is usually not to breathe more, or even to breathe “correctly.” It is to do a little less, and let your breathing find its own way back. That is what the exercise that follows is for. It is not a breathing drill, and it will not ask you for big or deliberate breaths. It simply helps you get out of your own way.
The exercise for air hunger
If turning your attention inward ever increases your distress rather than softening it, that does not mean you are doing it wrong. You can open your eyes, take little breaks or simply stop. Nothing here should feel like effort. It is meant to be an easing. Your wellbeing comes first, and this is only one gentle tool among many.
Follow along with me in this short video on Youtube or read the steps below. Either way, it takes only a few minutes.
Are you sitting down? Good. Make yourself comfortable, settle back a little, and when you are ready, close your eyes.
(Well. Read the steps through first, of course. Then close them 😉.)
- Rest your hands on your lower abdomen, the part below your belly button, and simply notice what is there. The only question is this: how much calmness, and how much activity, can you feel in this place? Whatever those words mean to you, it’s fine. And if those words are triggering something unwanted for you, feel free to choose different words.
You might phrase the answer to this question as “I perceive …% calmness and …% activity”. There is no right or wrong answer, and nothing to fix. Calm is not better than active, and active is not better than calm. Do not try to change anything. Allow whatever is there to be there, and if something shifts on its own, let it. But don’t decide to shift it yourself.
- When you have a sense of that first area, move your hands a little higher, to the soft place at the base of your breastbone, where you can become aware of the front part of your diaphragm. Ask the same question with curiosity. How calm, how active, is this region? Whatever presents itself, it’s welcome. If a judgement drifts in, a “this is bad” or a wish for things to be different, that is completely human. Notice it, and let it pass.
- Now move your hands to the upper part of your breastbone, just below the collarbones, and notice the calmness vs. activity in this area too. If awareness of what is happening is difficult or impossible, that’s also fine. Being aware of the fact that interoception (feeling what is happening inside your body) is challenging… is also awareness.
- And finally, bring your hands to the sides of your ribcage, fingers pointing towards your armpits so the outside part of your fingers rest against the ribs, which lets you feel this area without lifting your shoulders.
You have just visited four places: low belly, upper belly, upper chest, and the sides of the ribs. Now, take a moment to ask yourself which energy you would like to transfer, the calmness or the activity. If it’s the calmness, rest your hands on whichever place felt the calmest, and imagine drawing a little of that calm into your hands. Then move your hands to the area that felt the least calm, and let that calm flow from your hands into it. You could also decide to absorb and release the active energy instead of the calmness. Because remember:
Calm is not better than active, and active is not better than calm.
Then, finish. Take a moment before you open your eyes.
(At this point, close your eyes, execute the exercise and then continue reading. Don’t cheat, you’ll ruin the whole purpose 
)
Welcome back! You now might ask yourself:
- “What did I notice? Was there a big difference between the four areas? Was one of them harder to feel than the others?”
- “What happened in my mind? Did I judge, and if I did, could I let it go without being hard on myself?”
- “Was I able to draw the calm / activity in and let it move? If not, what got in the way?”
- “And my breath. Was I aware of it? If so, did it stay the same, or did something change as I went along? If it shifted, how would I describe it?”
- “Anything else I noticed (in my own words)?”
Nothing in that exercise asked you to change your breathing. I did not even ask you to pay it any attention. And yet, for most people, the breath softens and deepens a little all on its own. That is not a coincidence.
Why this exercise helps with air hunger
The short answer is that you spent a few minutes not interfering, and your breathing took that as permission to settle.
It is more about UNdoing than doing.
Underneath that simple idea, several things were happening at once.
The first is simply that you stopped overriding your breath. As I described higher up, reaching in to control breathing tends to get in the way of a system that runs perfectly well on its own. This exercise asked the opposite of you, to notice and to allow and to change nothing on purpose. Because of this, your automatic breathing was free to do what it is built to do, which is usually to slow and settle.
At the same time, you were nudging your nervous system towards calm. Sitting quietly and turning a soft, unhurried attention inward can gently shift the body away from its fight-or-flight setting and towards rest and repair. That’s important for air hunger, because the rapid, high-chest breathing that feeds it belongs to the fight-or-flight side. Calm the system, and the breathing it produces tends to calm with it.
Most importantly, you changed how the feeling was read, not only the breath. Breathlessness is not a direct readout from your lungs. It is something the brain assembles from many signals at once, and how much attention and alarm you bring to it strongly shapes how intense it feels. Research with people who have lung conditions has found that a non-judgemental awareness of inner sensations may, over time, change the experience of those sensations. When you meet the feeling with “calm is not better than active”, you take some of the threat out of it, and a sensation that feels less dangerous tends to feel less intense. This is also why we kept your attention on calmness and activity rather than on the breath itself: watching the breath too closely can tip into hyper-vigilance and leave some people feeling worse rather than better, which is the very risk this exercise is built around, and why the permission to ease off is there.
If you are hypermobile, there is something extra in it for you. Earlier we saw that hypermobile bodies tend to sense their own internal state (interoception) less accurately, including how much they are breathing. A gentle, repeated practice of tuning in, without grading yourself, is training for exactly that sense, and since shakier interoception tends to travel with more distress, getting to know that inner landscape a little better can help in its own right. It will not change your connective tissue, and it is not meant to. It simply helps you read your body more clearly.
And the hands? The part where you draw calm in and let it flow out is not a physiological mechanism, and it does not need to be. It is an image: a simple, friendly task for the mind that keeps your attention soft and occupied, rather than anxiously checking whether the next breath will be enough. The imagining is the point, not any literal transfer of energy, and used that way it does real work.
None of this is a cure, and none of it replaces proper care. If your air hunger has structural roots, like the rib or breathing-muscle issues that are common in hypermobility, this exercise is an addition to the right physiotherapy, not a replacement.
What it offers everyone is a way back to your own breath that asks for less instead of more. And the more often you return to it, gently and without keeping score, the more your body learns that it is safe to let go.
Do you want to learn more about breathing, and how it helps you sing freely?
Subscribe to The singsing! Sofa Library, watch the webinar on Breath Management, and learn to breathe in a way that truly serves your vocal goals.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a breathing exercise?
Not in the usual sense. It will not ask you to breathe deeply, slowly, or to any particular count. When air hunger comes from a breathing pattern, deliberately controlling the breath often makes it worse, so this exercise does the opposite. It helps you notice, allow, and let your breathing settle on its own. It is an awareness and undoing practice rather than a breathing drill.
Can long COVID cause air hunger?
Yes, and very often. After a viral infection, many people are left with real breathlessness even though their lungs and heart test normal. The usual cause is a dysfunctional breathing pattern, a breathing rhythm that drifted off track around the time of the illness, rather than lung damage. Because it is a pattern and not damage, gentle breathing-pattern retraining can help it settle. If you have not had lingering breathlessness checked yet, please do, since a virus can occasionally leave genuine effects too.
Why is air hunger so common in hypermobile singers?
Hypermobility affects the connective tissue that supports your ribcage and your breathing muscles, and it can even affect how accurately you sense your own breathing, so the whole machinery of breathing has less stability to work with. Ribs can move too much or sublux, the breathing-in muscles can be weaker, and the body’s internal read on how much it is breathing can be less reliable. For hypermobile singers, who may also carry performance nerves and a habit of taking big breaths, those layers stack on top of one another. The hopeful part is that a gentle awareness practice trains the very sense of the breath that tends to be unreliable in a hypermobile body.
Why does air hunger happen with anxiety or performance nerves?
Stress and anxiety naturally quicken and lift your breathing, as part of the body preparing for action. The trouble is that this can tip into over-breathing, where you breathe out too much carbon dioxide and your body begins to feel as though it cannot get enough air, even when it can. For singers and speakers, performance nerves are a very common trigger, and the more alarming the breathless feeling becomes, the more it tends to feed itself.
Is air hunger dangerous, and when should I see a doctor?
Air hunger that comes from a breathing pattern is uncomfortable, and it is not in itself dangerous. It can also be a signal of something else, though, which is why new, sudden, or severe breathlessness, or breathlessness with chest pain, an irregular heartbeat, dizziness, or fainting, is always a reason to see a doctor rather than to reach for an exercise. When in doubt, get it checked. There is more on this in the safety note above.
RESOURCES:
- Impairment of lung volume perception and breathing control in hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Hakimi A, Bergoin C, De Jesus A, Hermand E, Fabre C, Mucci P (2024)
- Inspiratory muscle strength training improves lung function in patients with the hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome: A randomized controlled trial, Reychler G, Liistro G, Piérard GE, Hermanns-Lê T, Manicourt D (2019)
- Respiratory manifestations in the Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, Bascom R, Dhingra R, Francomano C, et al. (2021)
- Dysfunctional breathing after COVID-19: recognition and ramifications, Gaffney A (2024)
- Understanding changes in dyspnoea perception in obstructive lung disease after mindfulness training, Malpass A, Feder G, Dodd JW (2018)
- Mindfulness in people with a respiratory diagnosis: A systematic review, Harrison SL, Lee A, Janaudis-Ferreira T, Goldstein RS, Brooks D (2016)
- Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity, Gerritsen RJS, Band GPH (2018)
- EDS, Hypermobility, and Breathing, Jeannie Di Bon (2025)
As always, feel free to send me your thoughts, questions, and feedback in the comments below this blog, via the contact form or in the singsing! online community 
Warm regards,
Sarah
Sarah Algoet is a singer, voice teacher, vocal coach and voice researcher who works with singers and speakers on voice, breath and performance. She is also a public speaking coach, a mentor for teachers and coaches, and a voice illustrator.