I learned Buteyko breathing through Patrick McKeown’s books and DVDs (which have been mentioned already) and also through Artour Rakhimov from normalbreathing.com and his ebooks. I also used the BreathSlim device, which is the same as the Frolov, but half the price.
I find it to be amazingly helpful. It totally transformed my unconscious habit of sucking in my belly. I had no idea how tense my belly was until I started relaxing it by doing the breathing exercises. I find that it is also wonderful for anxiety and also for insomnia. All in all, Buteyko breathing has been a god-send in my life.
I have never had the experience of Buteyko breathing reducing my appetite. I actually find the opposite. For me it relaxes bodily tension, improves intestinal mobility (so much that breathing exercises are a great way for me to have an easy poop – hope that’s not too much information,) and generally helps my digestion.
I’ve found that Buteyko breathing is a good starting point for me. However, I like to experiment and play around with it. I am a fan of Feldenkrais, and I like Feldenkrais’s attitude toward breathing, which is that the healthiest breathing is when we use the most appropriate breathing in the moment and when we have a full range of breathing styles available to us. So I play around with breathing to explore lots of different ways to breathe and the various effects. I like the ideas behind Buteyko breathing – namely retaining CO2. And so I especially explore various ways to breathe that I expect will retain CO2, but may not fit the mold of classic Buteyko reduced breathing. I plan to write up something about this at some point. If I remember I will add a link to that here when I do that.