Nostril flaring is driven by a small muscle on each side of your nose called the nasalis, which widens your nasal passages to pull in more air. For most people who want to stop it, the flaring is either a stress response, a breathing habit, or an unconscious facial tic they’ve developed over time. The good news: because it’s muscle-driven, you can train yourself out of it with a combination of breathing work, facial muscle awareness, and stress management.
Why Your Nostrils Flare in the First Place
Your nasal muscles work together to open and close your airway. When you need more air, whether from physical exertion, anxiety, or even just a stuffy nose, these muscles activate to increase airflow. That’s the flaring you see. In a calm, well-breathing person, these muscles stay relatively quiet. But if your baseline breathing pattern is shallow or rapid, or if you carry a lot of tension in your face, the nasalis muscle can fire more often than it needs to.
Some people also flare their nostrils as an emotional expression, tied to anger, frustration, or concentration. Over time, this can become an unconscious habit that happens even when you’re relaxed. Understanding which trigger applies to you (breathing difficulty, emotional response, or pure habit) helps you pick the right approach.
Retrain Your Breathing Pattern
If your nostrils flare because you’re pulling in too much air too quickly, the fix starts with how you breathe. Shallow, rapid breathing through the chest forces your nasal muscles to work harder. Slower, deeper breathing through the diaphragm reduces the demand on those muscles significantly.
One structured approach is the Buteyko method, which trains you to breathe more gently and less rapidly. The core exercise works like this: sit upright, breathe normally for a few minutes, then after a relaxed exhale, gently pinch your nose and hold your breath until you feel the first urge to inhale. That’s called the “control pause.” Breathe normally for at least 10 seconds, then repeat. The goal is to gradually lengthen this pause over weeks, which recalibrates your breathing to be slower and calmer at rest. The Buteyko Breathing Association recommends practicing 15 to 20 minutes, three times a day, for at least six weeks to see lasting changes.
Even without a formal protocol, you can make a difference by simply switching to slow nasal breathing throughout the day. Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth, close your lips, and breathe in through your nose for a count of four, then out for a count of six. This longer exhale activates your body’s calming response and takes pressure off the nasal muscles that cause flaring.
Build Conscious Control Over the Muscle
You can learn to control your nasalis the same way you’d learn to raise one eyebrow: through deliberate practice. Start by standing in front of a mirror and intentionally flaring your nostrils, then relaxing them. Do this slowly, 10 to 15 times. The point isn’t to strengthen the flare but to build a clear mental connection to the muscle so you can feel when it activates and consciously release it.
Face yoga exercises that target the area around the nose and upper lip can also help. One simple routine: fill your cheeks and lips with air, hold for six seconds, then release. Repeat three times. Then push your lips forward as if making a kiss, hold for six seconds, release, and repeat. These exercises engage the muscles surrounding the nasalis, improving your overall awareness and control of that region of your face. Practicing for just a few minutes daily builds the kind of fine motor awareness that lets you catch a flare before it fully happens.
Break the Habit Loop
If your nostril flaring has become an unconscious habit, the most effective behavioral approach is called habit reversal training. It’s a well-established technique used for all kinds of repetitive, unwanted movements, from nail biting to facial tics. The process has two key parts.
First, awareness training. You need to identify exactly when and where the flaring happens. Keep a simple log for a few days: note the time, what you were doing, and how you were feeling. Many people discover their flaring clusters around specific situations like conversations, stress, or concentration. You might also notice a precursor, something that happens just before the flare, like tensing your jaw or furrowing your brow.
Second, competing response training. Once you notice the flare starting (or the precursor), you immediately do a different action with the same muscles. For nostril flaring, a good competing response is to gently press your lips together, relax your jaw, and take one slow breath. This engages nearby facial muscles in a way that’s incompatible with flaring, and it’s subtle enough to do in public. Over several weeks of consistent practice, the old habit weakens and the new response becomes automatic.
Address the Stress Response
Nostril flaring is part of your body’s fight-or-flight toolkit. When your brain senses danger, real or imagined, it ramps up your heart rate, quickens your breathing, and activates muscles that widen your airway. If you’re chronically stressed or anxious, your body may stay in this state of high alert, keeping those nasal muscles partially engaged even at rest.
Activating your vagus nerve, the long nerve that runs from your brainstem to your abdomen and regulates heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, can shift you out of that alert state. A few simple techniques work well. Humming or chanting for a few minutes stimulates the vagus nerve through your vocal cords and throat muscles. Splashing cold water on your face triggers a calming reflex. Slow exhale breathing (inhale for four counts, exhale for eight) directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
Regular meditation, even 10 minutes a day, has a compounding effect. It lowers your baseline level of nervous system arousal, which means your body is less likely to trigger the flaring response during everyday situations. Consistent sleep, physical activity, and reduced caffeine intake all support this same shift toward a calmer resting state.
Use Nasal Strips to Reduce the Need to Flare
If part of your flaring is compensatory, meaning your nose is working harder because your airway is partially restricted, external nasal dilator strips can help. These adhesive strips sit across the bridge of your nose and act like a spring, pulling your nasal passages open mechanically. Studies show they reduce nasal airway resistance by an average of 27% and improve airflow by about 21%, which means your nasal muscles don’t have to activate as aggressively to get air in.
The effect is most pronounced in people with a deviated septum or naturally narrow nasal passages. Some people respond strongly to the strips while others see minimal difference, likely depending on how much of their flaring is caused by restricted airflow versus habit or stress. Wearing them at night can also improve sleep quality by reducing the number of times you shift into lighter sleep stages due to airflow resistance. They’re inexpensive and worth testing to see if airflow restriction is contributing to your flaring pattern.
When Flaring Signals Something Else
Occasional nostril flaring during exercise, strong emotions, or a stuffy nose is completely normal. But persistent flaring at rest, especially paired with rapid breathing, visible effort to inhale, or a bluish tint to the lips or fingernails, can signal genuine breathing difficulty. This is particularly important in children, where nasal flaring is one of the earliest visible signs of respiratory distress. If flaring appears alongside any of these symptoms, it needs medical evaluation rather than home exercises.