Meanings
- uncountableThe belief in, or practice of, living without food, subsisting instead on prana or sunlight.
Followers of the cult Breatharianism believe that the energy they save on digesting food and drink can be transformed into physical, emotional and spiritual energy.
2012 April 25, “Woman starves to death in spiritual quest to live on sunlight alone”, in Daily Mail2 more examples
Wiley Brooks, the guru of Breatharianism, espouses a system of physical vitality by which one may stop eating and drinking entirely, and live, lichenlike, off light and air.
1988, Rev. Ivan Stang, High Weirdness by Mail, New York: Fireside, →ISBN, →OL, page 33An exponent of Breatharianism named Wiley Brooks, a handsome, very thin black man in his forties, headed the Breatharian Institute of America, and in 1983 claimed not to have consumed anything except an occasional glass of fruit juice for eighteen years.
1998, Ricky Jay, “The Ultimate Diet: The Art and Artifice of Fasting”, in Jay's Journal of Anomalies, volume 4, number 1
Origin
Translations
French respirianisme
- respirianismeTranslations
German Nahrungslosigkeit
- NahrungslosigkeitTranslations
Cite this entry
breatharianism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/breatharianism
“breatharianism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/breatharianism. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “breatharianism,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/breatharianism.
Source: breatharianism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.