Narrator: This is Science Today. A study conducted at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has found that a Western mind-body technique used for years in Germany helps patients suffering from chronic lower back pain. Dr. Wolf Mehling, who led the study, says it's called breath therapy.

Mehling: It's a combination of movement exercises with hands-on individual work and has a meditative approach to body sensations, particularly body sensations caused by the movement of breath in the body.

Narrator: Like yoga or Tai Chi, Mehling says patients using breath therapy experience proprioception, or body awareness, which helped patients cope with their chronic lower back pain.

Mehling: Any emotion that we have changes our breath rhythm. So, the breath is kind of at the interface of physical functions and emotional functions and thinking. It's kind of the core thing that is actually surprising that medicine hasn't taken more attention to it.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.