Breathing Life Flows Through Chaos
Reconfiguring the Effectiveness of Five‐Finger Breathing in Mental Health First Aid
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7513890 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yuxin Peng (0000-0002-2408-964X, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropology of Consciousness (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1053-4202 • E-ISSN: 1556-3537 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/anoc.70032 |
| OpenAlex | W7128495046 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 40 |
This article questions the moral and causal certainties attributed to the clinical assumptions of the breath of chaos. Instead of seeing chaos as an exceptional intruder that causes problems in health, I suggest that chaos underlines the changing conditions of health and it's an intrinsic part of breathing and everyday life. I discuss the five‐finger breathing as a therapeutic technique to cope with the shortness of breath in panic attacks. I propose that the practice makes chaos an ineluctable prompt that evokes therapeutic anchoring, which helps with the navigation of life. Moving away from the clinical assessments, I adopt the approach of participant experience to present a medical anthropological analysis of the effectiveness of five‐finger breathing as practised in a mental health recovery group in Southeast England
Breathing · CHAOS (operating system · Clinical Practice · Mental health · Panic · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Interdisciplinary Cultural and Social Studies
The Transmission of Chinese Medicine
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Evaluation
Argonauts of the Western Pacific
Milton's Hostile Chaos
Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality
Getting comfortable with physical discomfort
Breathless
A cultural examination of the DSM-5
Chaos in physiology
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Breath, Body and World
On Breath and Breathing
Researching Embodiment by Way of 'Body Techniques
Somatic Modes of Attention
The Challenge of Indigenous Healing for Global Mental Health
Consciousness as a cultivated faculty that develops according to social and historical conditions
Techniques of the body∗
Cultural Psychiatry, Medical Anthropology, and the DSM-5 Field Trials
Sense of Motion, Senses of Self
| Highly cited | No |
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