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Wow wow wow what a book! The most important book I've read in my life. This is a basis for everything that can follow. If you can't breathe properly then you can't live property. Don't scoff! Do you know how many of us are not breathing correctly? Maybe 50% (including me). Still don't believe me? Read on.
Do you know anyone who (when they stick it out) can be seen with visible teeth imprints on the sides of their tongue? This means, usually through no fault of their own, that their tongue no longer fits between their teeth. This is a precursor to snoring and much more about snoring later!
(BTW Snoring is a symptom of a problem, not a precursor to problems and it is NOT natural)
Mouthbreathers
Sounds like evil monsters from a Harry Potter book doesn't it? But mouthbreathers are what the word sounds like. People who habitually breath though their mouth.
There are many causes such as stress, allergies or pollution. But the worst cause is explained as follows:
When mouths don't grow wide enough, the roof of the mouth tends to rise up instead of out, forming what's called a V-shape or high-arched palate. The upward growth impedes the development of the nasal cavity, shrinking it and disrupting the delicate structures in the nose. The reduced nasal space leads to obstruction and inhibits airflow.
Overall, humans have the sad distinction of being the most plugged-up species on Earth. Of the 5,400 different species of mammals on the planet, humans are now the only ones to routinely have misaligned jaws, overbites, underbites, and snaggled teeth. Sure we have evolved more than any other species, but evolution does not always mean progress! We are actually passing down some traits that are detrimental to our health. It's called DYSEVOLUTION. It explains why our backs ache, feet hurt, and bones are growing more brittle.
Nine out of ten of the top killers, such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are caused by the food we eat, water we drink, houses we live in, and offices we work in. They are diseases humanity created!
Did you know that stuffy noses, snoring, wheezing, asthma and allergies are not really causes of not being able to breathe correctly. They are symptoms!
What if overbreathing is not the result of hypertension and headaches, but the cause?
Let's go back to when we were the only remaining human species (Sapiens). Those who lived in sunny and warm environments (Filipinos, Colombians for example) developed wider and flatter noses, which were more efficient at inhaling hot and humid air. However the Spanish changed the bloodlines and now people from these countries have narrower and longer noses, giving them many orthodontic problems, among other things.
To gauge the severity of your snoring (and possibly apnoea), you should download an app that records a constant stream of audio through the night, then provides a minute-to-minute graph of your breathing health every morning. And you could put a night vision security camera just above the bed too, to monitor every moment. Prepare to be surprised!
IMPORTANT : Find the best heart rate for exercise is easy. Subtract your age (50) from 180. So for me its currently 130. The result is the maximum bpm your body can withstand to stay in the all important aerobic state. Long bouts of training and exercise can happen below this rate but never above it, otherwise the body will risk going too deep into the anaerobic zone for too long. Instead of feeling invigorated and strong after a workout, you'd feel tired, shaky and nauseated.
Exercising at 50-60% of your maximum capacity leads to massive gains in aerobic fitness, improved blood pressure and prevention of several diseases.
Over exercising above 60% (toward that anaerobic zone) has been shown to induce a stress state, increase cortisol, adrenaline and oxidative stress.
Mouthbreathing , it turns out, changes the physical body and transforms airways, all for the worse. Inhaling air through the mouth decreases pressure, which causes the soft tissues at the back of your mouth to become loose and flex inward, creating less space and making breathing more difficult. Mouthbreathing begets more mouthbreathing!
Inhaling from the nose has the opposite effect. It forces air against all those flabby tissues at the back of the throat, making the airways wider and breathing easier. After a while, these tissues and muscles get "toned" to stay in this opened and wide position. Nasal breathing begets more nasal breathing!
When seasonal allergies hit, incidences of sleep apnoea and breathing difficulties shoot up. The nose gets stuffed, we start mouthbreathing, and the airways collapse. It's simple physics.
Sleeping with an open mouth exacerbates these problems. Whenever we put our heads on a pillow, gravity pulls the soft tissues in the throat and tongue down, closing off the airway even more. After a while, our airways get conditioned to this position; snoring and sleep apnoea become the new normal.
The more and louder we snore, the more the airways become damaged and the more susceptible we are to apnoea.
Mouthbreathing causes your blood to not carry enough oxygen to support body tissues. If this goes on too long, it can lead to heart failure, depression, memory problems, and early death. So sort it out!
Another thing happens when you mouthbreathe. The body loses water. You will wake up every night with a dry and parched mouth! You'd think this moisture loss would decrease the need to urinate, but the opposite is true.
If the body has inadequate deep sleep (as happens with sleep apnoea) the kidneys will release water, which triggers the need to urinate and signals to our brains that we should consume more liquid. We get thirsty, and we need to pee more.
There are several books that describe the horrendous health effects of snoring and sleep apnoea. For example, high blood pressure and cancer.
Chronic insomnia, long assumed to be a psychological problem, is often a breathing problem.
We can't sleep because we can't breathe.
NO AMOUNT OF SNORING IS NORMAL!!!
And no amount of sleep apnoea comes without the risks of serious health effects.
Amazing things happen when you start to breathe properly. Your slack-jawed narrow face will morph into a more natural configuration. Your blood pressure will normalise, depression will abate and tension headaches will disappear.
What most people never consider is the nose's unexpected role in problems like erectile dysfunction and countless other issues. The health benefits of nose breathing are undeniable! One of the many benefits is that the sinuses release a huge boost of nitric oxide, a molecule that plays an essential role in increasing circulation and delivering oxygen into cells. Immune function, weight, circulation, mood, and SEXUAL FUNCTION can all be heavily influenced by the amount of nitric acid in the body. (The popular erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, works by releasing nitric oxide into the bloodstream, which opens the capillaries in the genitals and elsewhere.
The right nostril is like a gas pedal. When you're inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation speeds up, your body gets hotter, and cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate increase. The "fight or flight" mechanism is activated.
The left nostril is like a brake. It is more deeply connected to the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-relax side that lowers blood pressure, cools the boy, and reduces anxiety. So should you sleep on your right side then so that you primarily breathe through your left nostril?
There's a yoga practice dedicated to manipulating the body's functions with forced breathing through the nostrils. It's called nadi shodhana - in Sanskrit, nadi means "channel" and shodhana means "purification" - or, more commonly, alternate nostril breathing.
When yogis finish a mean, they lie on their left side (try it!) so that they will breathe primarily from their right nostril. The increase of blood flow and heat via right-nostril breathing, yogis believe, can aid in digestion.
There are dozens of alternate nostril breathing techniques. This is the basic one :
It involves placing an index finger of the left nostril and then inhaling and exhaling only through the right. I did this two dozen times after each meal today, to heat up ,my body and aid my digestion. Before meals, and any other time I wanted to relax, I'd switch sides, repeating the same exercise with my left nostril open. To gain focus and balance the body and mind, I followed a technique called surya bheda pranayama, which involves taking one breath into the right nostril, then exhaling through the left for several rounds.
Keeping the nose constantly in use trains the tissues inside the nasal cavity and throat to flex and stay open. Could you breathe through your nose all day and all night? You might like to try "sleep tape".
What you need is a postage stamp size piece of tape at the centre of the lips.
The best tape is 3M Nexcare Durapore "durable cloth" tape, and all-purpose surgical tape with a gentle adhesive. It is comfortable, has no chemical scent and doesn't leave a residue.
Once you breathe through your nose all night you will never wake up needing to pee.
Here is the most important Motto which human language can convey : SHUT-YOUR-MOUTH!
The cause of the common cold?
Excessive dairy, allergies and starchy foods increase mucus weight and density. Cilia (the small hairs inside your nose) become overwhelmed. This is how the nose becomes congested. The longer the nose is stopped up, the more microbes build up, resulting in a cold or a nasal infection (sinusitis).
Even if we breathe through the nose 24 hours a day, it won't help much unless we've got the lung capacity to hold in that air. Just a few minutes of daily bending and breathing can expand lung capacity. With that extra capacity we can expand our lives.
The stretches, called the Five Tibetan Rites, came to the Western world by way of the writer Peter Kelder.
Kelder described these techniques in a slim booklet titled The Eye of Revelation, published in 1939. The lung expanding stretches he described are rooted in actual exercises that date back to 500BC. Tibetans had used these methods for millennia to improve physical fitness, mental health, cardiovascular function, and, of course, extend life.
Performing each "rite" for 21 rounds as the ancient Tibetans did is a perfect starting point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Tibetan_Rites
In the 1980's researchers discovered that the greatest indicator of life span wasn't genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise. IT WAS LUNG CAPACITY. Larger lungs equal longer lives.
The lungs themselves will lose about 12% of capacity from the age of 30 to the age of 50, and will continue declining even faster as we get older. Hence, we are forced to breathe faster and harder. This leads to chronic problems like high blood pressure, immune disorders, and anxiety.
Freedivers have learnt to increase their lung capacity by an astounding 30 to 40%.
Even moderate exercise such as walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15%.
"When the breath is perfect, the form is perfect" - old Chinese adage from 700AD.
A choir conductor called Carl Stough discovered that the key to proper breathing, lung expansion and long life was on the other end of respiration. It was in the transformative power of a full exhalation.
A typical adult engages as little as 10% (not enough) of the range of the diaphragm when breathing, which overburdens the heart, elevates blood pressure, and causes a rash of circulatory problems.
You should use at least 50% of the range of the diaphragm when you breathe!
Over time, shallow breathing will limit the range of our diaphragms and lung capacity and lead to the high-shouldered, chest-out, next-extended posture common in those with emphysema, asthma and other respiratory problems.
SO TRY THIS: Several rounds of deep breaths to open your rib cage. Then with every exhale, start counting from 1 to 10 over and over. At the end of the exhale, when you are so out of breath that you can't vocalize anymore, keep counting silently and let your breath trail down to a "sub-whisper".
However! Breathing heavily, breathing quickly and as deeply as you can on a continuous basis is not good at all! This depletes your body of carbon dioxide. What our bodies really want, what they require to function properly, isn't faster or deeper breaths! It's not more air. What we need is more CO2!
To achieve this you need to learn how to inhale and exhale SLOWLY. The author of this book inhales and exhales slower than the average person. Instead of 18 breaths a minute, he does 6.
What is very little known is the role carbon dioxide plays in weight loss. The way the body loses weight inside through sweating or "burning it off". We lose weight through EXHALED BREATH.
For every 5kg of fat lost in our bodies, 4kg of it comes out through the lungs! Most of it is carbon dioxide and water vapour. The rest of the fat we lose is sweated or urinated out.
This is a fact that most doctors, nutritionists, and other medical professionals have historically gotten wrong. The lungs are actually the weight-regulating system of the body.
As basic as it sounds, full exhalations are rarely practiced. Most of us engage only a small fraction of our total lung capacity with each breath, requiring us to do more and get less. One of the first steps in healthy breathing is to extend these breaths, to move the diaphragm up and down a bit more, and to get air out of us before taking a new one in.
A technique called khechari, intended to help boost physical and spiritual health and overcome disease, involves placing the tongue above the soft palate so that it's pointed towards the nasal cavity. The deep, slow breaths taken during this khechari each take six seconds. The effect is calming.
Some doctors have used the same breathing pattern on patients with anxiety and depression. It turned out that the most efficient breathing rhythm occurred when both the length of respirations and total breaths per minute were locked into symmetry : 5.5 second inhales followed by 5.5 second exhales, which works out to almost exactly 5.5 breaths a minute! That's also a total of about 5.5 litres of air.
The results are profound, even when practiced for just five or ten minutes a day! Try to build it up to an hour or more though. There is no limit to breathing like this.
Most of us breathe too much, and up to a quarter of the modern population suffers from more serious chronic over breathing. The fix is easy : breathe less.
To be clear, breathing less is not the same as breathing slowly.
The key to optimum breathing, and all the health, endurance, and longevity benefits that come with it, is to practice fewer inhales and exhales in a smaller volume. To breathe, but to breathe less.
There may be wonders in breathing way less than anyone normally should : the respiratory equivalent of fasting. Be warned though : starving yourself of air can be injurious if it becomes a regular thing.
Ordinarily, we should breathe as closely in line with our needs as we can. But occasionally willing the body to breathe way less has some potent benefits just as fasting does. It can even lead to euphoria.
JOGGING WHILE BREATHING LESS
The key to enjoyable jogging is to find a rhythm that works for you.
As you warm up, start extending your exhales. Each breath we draw in should take about 3 seconds, and each breath out should take 4 seconds. Then continue with the same short inhales while lengthening the exhales to a 5, 6, and 7 count as the run progresses. Try to keep your lungs about half full.
This extension of the exhales goes fat past the point of what feels comfortable, or even safe.
However, the point of the exercise is not to inflict unnecessary pain. It's to get the body comfortable with higher levels of Carbon Dioxide, so that we'll unconsciously breathe less during our resting hours and the next time we work out. And then we will release more oxygen, increase our endurance, and better support all the functions of our bodies.
If its easier try this : Inhale for two paces and exhale for five (a pattern cyclists use).
The only way to retain a slow RESTING heart rate is with slow breaths.
Weeks, months, or years of overbreathing will deplete the body of essential minerals. This occurs because as bicarbonate leaves the body, it takes magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and more with it.
This buffers your kidneys. Constant buffering also weakens the bones, as they try to compensate the body by dissolving their mineral stores back into the bloodstream.
Extend the length of time between inhalations and exhalations. Try to extend exhales then hold the breath with lungs half-full as long as possible and do it all over again. The more "air hunger" you create the more EPO will release from the kidneys, the more red blood cells will release from bone marrow, the more resilient the body will become and the further, faster and higher it will go.
"The yogi's life is not measured by days, but by the number of his breaths" - B.K.S. Iyengar.
By various means, in various ways, in various eras of human history, all pulmonauts discovered the same thing. The optimum amount of air we should take in at rest per minute is 5.5 litres. The optimum breathing rate is 5.5 breaths per minute on average. That's 5.5 second inhales and 5.5 second exhales.
THIS IS THE PERFECT BREATH.
Chewing
12,000 years ago humans in the Eastern Mediterranean stopped hunter gathering and started growing their own food. They were the first farming cultures, and in these primitive settlements, humans suffered from the first widespread instances of crooked teeth and deformed mouths.
Researchers have suspected that industrialized food was shrinking our mouths and destroying our breathing for as long as we've been eating this way. One cause of our shrinking mouths and obstructed airways is deficiencies in all essential vitamins and minerals.
Modern diets are the same : white rice, white flour, jams, sweetened juices, canned vegetables and processed meats. The traditional diets were all different.
However the main cause is not so much to do with what we eat, but how we eat it.
CHEWING. It's the constant stress of chewing that is missing from our diets - not just vitamins. 95% of the modern, processed diet is soft. Even what's considered healthy food today - smoothies, nut butters, oatmeal, avocados, whole wheat bread, vegetable soups - is all soft.
Don't follow the diet advice of eating wat your great-grandmothers ate. Too much of that stuff was already soft and overly processed. Your diet should consist of the rougher, rawer, and heartier foods our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers ate! The kinds of foods that required an hour or two a day of hard chewing. And in the meantime, lips together, teeth slightly touching and tongue on the roof of the mouth.
Nasal Unblocking
If you have a mild nasal obstruction you would use a saline nasal rinse, sometimes with a low-dose steroid spray. Cheap and easy.
However it's not necessarily nasal obstructions that are the issue here. Sleep apnea, snoring and ADHD, are all linked to obstruction in the mouth!
If you go to a mirror, open your mouth, and look at the back of the throat, you'll see a fleshy tassel that hands bat-like from the soft tissues. That's the uvula. In mouths least susceptible to airway obstruction, the uvula will appear high and clearly visible from top to bottom. The deeper the uvula appears to hang in the throat, the higher the risk of airway obstruction. In mouths that are the most susceptible, the uvula may not be visible at all. This measurement system to called the Friedman tongue position scale, and it's quickly used to estimate breathing ability.
Next is the tongue. If the tongue overlaps the molars, or has "scalloping" teeth indentations on its sides, it's too large and will be more apt to clog the throat when you lie down to sleep.
Farther down is the next. Thicker necks cramp airways. Men with neck circumference of more than 17 inches and women with necks larger than 16 inches have a significantly increased risk of airway obstruction. The more weight you gain, the higher your risk of suffering from snoring and sleep apnoea, although BMI is only one of many factors.
90% of the obstruction of the airway occurs around the tongue, soft palate, and tissues around the mouth. The smaller the mouth is, the more the tongue, uvula, and other tissues can obstruct airflow.
Doctors usually resort to using CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) masks which force bursts of air past the obstructed airways into lungs. It's quite an elaborate looking device, and an actual lifesaver for this suffering from moderate to severe sleep apnoea, and the devices have helped millions of people finally get a good nights rest. But they are difficult to wear.
Sometimes tonsils and/or adenoids are removed. But neither this nor CPAP masks provide a satisfying long term solution, because none deals with the core issue : a mouth that is too small for the face.
A hundred years ago a device called a 'monobloc' was used to force the upper palate to grow outward. This kicked off a wave of other mouth expanding devices that would be used for another benefit : straightening crooked teeth. Teeth will grow in naturally straight if they have enough room. These devices helped create a larger "playing field" for teeth. Unfortunately they were miserable to wear.
By the 1950's tooth extractions to create more room in the mouth became routine.
Unfortunately this simply made a too small mouth even smaller! Years later, patients would start complaining about snoring, sleep apnoea, hay fever, and asthma... that they had never had before!
Some even began to look different, their faces growing longer, flatter and less defined.
In the late 1950's a dentist named Dr. John Mew took notice. He measured the mouths of children who'd had extractions or had undergone retractive orthodontics and found they suffered from the same stunted mouth and facial growth.
The more teeth the patients had extracted and the longer they wore braces and other devices, the more obstruction seemed to develop in their airways.
In a strange twist, he found that the devices invented to fix crooked teeth caused by too-small mouths were making mouths smaller and breathing worse in 50% of patients.
His most renowned invention was the Biobloc, a modified version of the monobloc. Hundreds of orthodontists still use it today. Mew says it works best for children age 5 to 9, whose bones and faces are still developing and easily mouldable. That's a long time ago for most of us though!
The first step to improving airway obstruction wasn't orthodontics but instead involves maintaining correct "oral posture". Its easy and it's free!
It means holding the lips together, teeth lightly touching, with your tongue on the roof of the mouth. The tongue is a powerful muscle. If its directed at the roof of the mouth, it might help expand the upper palate of the mouth. To put it as simply as possible, push the tongue against the back roof of the mouth and move the rest of the tongue forward, like a wave, until the tip hits just behind the front teeth. You will look like your holding back vomit and it is admittedly awkward.
Hold the head up perpendicular to the body and don't kink the neck. When sitting or standing, the spine should form a J-shape. That means a perfectly straight spine until it reaches the small of the back, where it naturally curves outward. While maintaining this posture, we should always breathe SLOWLY through the nose into the abdomen.
The exercise, which fans of it call "mewing" has become a health craze! Mewers claim that after a few months, their mouths expanded, jaws became more defined, sleep apnoea symptoms lessened and breathing became easier.
Most people today though have an S-shape spine which is awful! It's not just adopted due to laziness but also because our tongues don't fit properly in our too-small mouths. Having nowhere else to go, the tongue falls into the back of the throat, creating a mild suffocation.
At night we choke and cough, attempting to push air in and out of this obstructed airway. This, of course, is sleep apnoea, and 25 % of Americans suffer from it.
Our S-shape spine is an unconscious attempt to open our obstructed airways, similar to CPR. However, our bodies hate this position. The weight of the sloping head stresses the back muscles, leading to back pain; the kink in our necks adds pressure to the brain stem, triggering headaches and other neurological problems.
Bone Loss
Conventional science says that bone loss begins at 30 and accelerates. It's most apparent in our faces. Sagging skin, baggy and hollow eyes, and sallow cheeks all result from bone disappearing and flesh having nowhere to go but down. As bone degrades deeper in the skull, soft tissues at the back of the throat have less to hang on to, so they can droop too, which can lead to airway obstruction. This bone loss partly explains why snoring and sleep apnoea often grow worse the older we get.
However! Unlike other bones in our bodies, the bone that makes up the centre of the face, called the maxilla, is made of a membrane bone that's highly plastic. The maxilla can remodel and grow more dense into our 70s, and likely longer! We can grow bone at any age. All we need are stem cells. And the way we produce and signal stem cells to build more maxilla bone in the face is by engaging the masseter (the chewing muscle located below the ears) - by clamping down on the back molars over and over.
CHEWING: The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we'll trigger, the younger we'll look and the better we'll breathe.
Hard natural foods and chewing gum are as effective for this as any kind of artificial device. You should chew gum for two hours a day. Use FALIM the Turkish gum for best results.
TUMMO, INNER FIRE AND TIBETAN BUDDHISTS:
There is a practice known by Buddhists as the "inner fire meditation" that has recently been taken up by a Dutchman named Wim Hof. Simply put, there is a way to use your breath to keep yourself from getting cold or, in extreme situations, from freezing to death. It's known as "Tummo-style breathing."
The military and professional fighters use Tummo to get into the zone. Its especially useful for middle-aged people who suffer from stress, aches and pains, and a slow metabolism. For them Tummo can be a preventative therapy, a way to get a fraying nervous system back on track and keep it there.
Sometimes the body needs more than a soft nudge to get realigned. Sometimes it needs a violent shove. That's what Tummo does.
It's common in the modern world to never experience full blown stress, but also to never be able to relax either. We spend our days half-asleep and our nights half-awake. True! We loll in a grey zone of half-anxiety. When we do, the vagus nerve (a meandering network within the nervous system that connects to all the major organs) stays half stimulated.
So if you suffer from anxiety, depression or autoimmune diseases, you need to stimulate the vagus nerve by breathing. Willing ourselves to breathe slowly will open up communication along the vagal network and relax us into a parasympathetic state.
Himalayan monks who practice Tummo breathing can increase the temperature of their extremities by up to 17 degrees Fahrenheit. Tummo heats the body and opens up the brains "pharmacy", flooding the body with self-produced opioids, dopamine, and serotonin. All that, with just a few hundred quick and heavy breaths.
Wim Hof
This Dutch man deserves a section to himself. He became known in the early 2000s when he ran a half-marathon through the snow above the Arctic Circle shirtless and in bare feet.
After his wife committed suicide Hof turned to yoga and meditation. He unearthed the ancient technique of Tummo, honed it, simplified it, repackaged it fir mass consumption and began promoting its powers in a string of daredevil stunts that would have been quickly discounted if the media hadn't been around to verify them.
He practices heavy breathing with cold exposure and that releases the stress hormones adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine on command. It even works on hangovers!
People who follow his course have been able to finally sleep peacefully. Men (mainly in their 20s) who had been diagnosed with arthritis and psoriasis or depression no longer suffered any symptoms after a few weeks of practicing heavy breathing.
They got off medications that had been on for years! They kept heating and healing themselves.
HERE'S THE INFORMATION : To practice Wim Hof's breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order.
At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you've reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three of found rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.
This flip-flopping of breathing all-out and then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again, is the key to Tummo's magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing allows us to bend so that we don't get broken. Tummo is for the reconstitution of man's immune system and it's fabulous.
Never practice Tummo while driving, walking, or in "any other environment where you might get hurt if you pass out." And never practice it if you have a heart condition or are pregnant.
Willing yourself to breathe heavily for short, intense time, can be profoundly therapeutic.
Fears and Anxieties
Fear of losing control causes panic attacks. Anxiety is an oversensitivity to perceived fear. On a neuronal level, anxieties and phobias are caused by overreactive amygdalae and breathing. The fact that 60% of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease also have anxiety or depression is not a coincidence. These patients are often breathing too much, too fast, panicking in anticipation of not being able to take another breath.
In fact, psychologists may have been treating fears and anxieties the wrong way. Fears aren't just a mental problem, and they can't be treated by simply getting patients to think differently. Fears and anxiety had a physical manifestation and they could also be generated from outside the amygdalae from within a more ancient part of the reptilian brain.
ONE MUST TEACH ANXIOUS PEOPLE THE ART OF HOLDING THEIR BREATH.
An ancient Chinese text offers this advice:
"Lie down every day, pacify your mind, cut off your thoughts and block (hold) the breath. Close your fists, inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. Do not let the breathing be audible. Let it be most subtle and fine. When the breath is full, block it. The blocking will make the soles of your feet perspire. Count one hundred times "one and two". After blocking the breath to the extreme, exhale it subtly. Inhale a little more and block the breath again. If you feel hot, exhale with "Ho." If you feel cold, blow the breath out and exhale with "Ch'ui." If you can breathe like this and count to one thousand (when blocking), then you will need neither grains nor medicine."
Today breathholding is associated with disease and for the most part this is correct. Seep apnoea is terribly damaging. Breathholding during waking hours is injurious as well, and more widespread.
Up to 80% of office workers (according to one estimate) suffer from something called continuous partial attention. We'll scan our email, write something down, check Twitter, and do it all over again, never really focusing on any specific task. In this state of perpetual distraction, breathing becomes shallow and erratic. Sometimes we don't breathe at all for a minute or longer! The problem is serious enough that its effects have been studied. The habit, also known as "email apnoea", can contribute to the same maladies as sleep apnoea.
Carbon Dioxide Therapy as a treatment for anxiety
This is an alternative treatment for "free-floating anxiety" or GAD. It has been found that between 2 and 5 inhalations of a 50/50 mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen is enough to lower the baseline level of anxiety in patients from 60 (debilitating) to zero. No other treatment comes close.
If you don't have anxiety, but just want to try Carbon Dioxide therapy for its health benefits then the most effective and safest blend is around 7% carbon dioxide mixed with room air.
People with anxiety suffer from connection problems between chemoreceptors and amygdalae and could unwittingly be holding their breath all day! Only when the body becomes overwhelmed by carbon dioxide would their chemoreceptors kick in and trigger an emergency signal to the brain to immediately get another breath. Panic ensues.
Eventually anxiety sufferers bodies adapt to avoid such unexpected attacks by staying in a state of alert, by constantly overbreathing in an effort to keep their carbon dioxide as low as possible.
Breathing Slow and Less
In the 1970's Swami Rama instructed his students :
They were to lie down, take a brief inhale, and then exhale to a count of 6. As they progressed, they could inhale to a count of 4 and exhale to 8, with the goal of reaching a half-minute exhale after six months of practice. Upon reaching this 30 count, Rama promised his students, they "will not have any toxins and will be disease-free."
Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and send the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.
SHUT YOUR MOUTH
The major takeaway from the book is this : Mouthbreathing is terrible. There is nothing normal about it.
Breathing through your gaping mouth at night, the constant flow of unpressurised, unfiltered air flowing in to it, causes the soft tissue in your throats to collapse to an extent that you experience persistent nocturnal suffocation. You snore. The body is not designed to process raw air for hours at a time.
During the day you will be fatigued, irritated, testy and anxious. Your breath will smell bad and you will need constant bathroom breaks. You will be spaced out and have stomach aches.
The human body has evolved to be able to breathe through two channels for a reason. It increases our chances of survival.
BREATHING METHODS : INTSRUCTIONAL GUIDES
Video tutorials of these techniques can be found on mrjamesnestor.com/breath
ALTERNATE NOSTRIL BREATHING (NADI SHODHANA)
It's effective before a meeting, an event or sleep.
Place the thumb of your right hand over your right nostril and the ring finger of the same hand over the left nostril. The forefinger and middle finger should rest between the eyebrows.
Close the right nostril with the thumb and inhale through the left nostril very slowly.
At the top of the breath, pause briefly, holding both nostrils closed, then lift just the thumb to exhale through the right nostril.
At the natural conclusion of the exhale, hold both nostrils closed for a moment, then inhale through the right nostril.
At the top of the breath, pause briefly, holding both nostrils closed, then lift just the ring finger to exhale through the left nostril.
Continue alternating breaths through the nostrils for five to ten cycles.
BREATHING COORDINATION
This technique helps to engage more movement from the diaphragm and increase respiratory efficiency. It should never be forced; each breath should feel soft and enriching.
Sit up so the spine is straight and the chin at right angles to the body.
Take in a large and gentle breath in through the noise. At the top of the breath begin counting softly aloud (from 1 up to as high as you can go), and keep going until you reach the natural conclusion of the exhale, then whisper, letting the voice fade away until only the lips are moving and the lungs feel completely empty.
Take in another large and soft breath and repeat.
Continue anywhere from 10 to 30 or more cycles.
Once you can do this while sitting, try it while walking and then jogging or any other light exercise.
RESONANT (COHERENT) BREATHING
A calming experience that places the heart, lungs and circulation into a state of coherence, where the systems of the body are working at peak efficiency. There is no more essential technique, and non more basic:
Sit up straight, relax the shoulders and belly and exhale.
Inhale softly for 5.5 seconds, expanding the belly as air fills the bottom of the lungs.
Without pausing, exhale softly for 5.5 seconds, bringing the belly in as the lungs empty. Each breath should feel like a circle.
Repeat at least ten times, more if possible.
BUTEYKO BREATHING (THERE ARE FIVE IN TOTAL)
(1) Control Pause
A diagnostic tool to gauge general respiratory health.
Place a stopwatch close by and sit up with a straight back.
Pinch both nostrils closed with the thumb and forefinger of either hand, then exhale softly out of your mouth to the natural conclusion.
Start the stopwatch and hold the breath.
When you feel the first potent desire to breathe, not the time and take a soft inhale.
It is important that this first breath is controlled and relaxed; if it's laboured or gasping, the breathhold was too long. Wait several minutes and try again.
Do not attempt this practice after strenuous exercise or when you are stressed. Neither while driving or underwater or in any other conditions where you might be injured should you become dizzy.
(2) Mini Breathholds
A key component to Buteyko breathing is to practice breathing less all the time, which is what this technique trains the body to do. Thousands of Buteyko practitioners, and several medical researchers swear by it to stave off asthma and anxiety attacks:
Exhale gently and hold the breath for half the time of your "Control Pause" above. For example, if your Control Pause is 40 seconds, the Mini Breathhold would be 20.
Repeat from 100 to 500 times a day.
Setting up times on your phone every 15 minutes could help remind you.
(3) Nose Songs
Nitric oxide is a powerhouse molecule that widens capillaries, increases oxygenation, and relaxes the smooth muscles. Humming increases the release of nitric oxide in the nasal passages 15-fold. There is the most effective, and simple, method for increasing this essential gas.
Breathe normally through the nose and hum, any song or sound.
Practice for at least 5 minutes per day, more if possible.
It may sounds ridiculous and feel ridiculous and annoy your friends, but the effects can be potent.
(4) Walking/Running
Hypoventilation exercises offer many of the benefits of altitude training. They are easy and can be practiced anywhere.
Walk or run for a minute or so while breathing normally through the nose.
Exhale and pinch the nose closed while keeping the same pace.
When you sense a palpable air hunger, release the nose and breathe very gently, at about half of what feels normal for about 10 to 15 seconds.
Return to regular breathing for 30 seconds.
Repeat for 10 cycles.
(5) Decongest the Nose
Sit up straight and exhale a soft breath, then pinch both nostrils shut.
Try to keep your mind off the breathholiding; shake your head up and down or side to side, go for a quicj walk or jump and run.
Once you feel a very potent sense of air hunger, take a very slow and controlled breath in through the nose (If the nose is still congested, breath softly through the mouth with pursed lips.)
Continue this calm, controlled breathing for at least 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Repeat all these steps 6 times.
CHEWING (3 PARTS)
(1) Gum
Any gum chewing can strengthen the jaw and stimulate stem cell growth, but harder textured varieties offer a more vigorous workout.
Falim, a Turkish brand, tough as old boots is the best. Chew for one hour. Sugarless Mint is the tastiest.
Mastic gum, which comes from the resin of the evergreen shrub Pistacia lentiscus, has been cultivated in the Greek Islands for thousands of years. Buy online.
(2)Oral Devices
Ted Belfor and Scott Simonetti have received FDA clearance for a device called the POD (Preventative Oral Device), a small retainer that fits along the bottom row of teeth and stimulates chewing stress.
(3) Palatal Expansion
There are dozens of devices to expand the palate and open airways, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Begin by contacting a dental professional who specializes in functional orthodontics.
Brits should contact Dr. Mike Mew's clinic at https://orthodontichealth.co.uk
TUMMO
There are two forms of Tummo - one that stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, and another which triggers a parasympathetic response. Both work, but the former, made popular by Wim Hof, is much more accessible.
Do not practice this method during situations that you might get hurt if you pass out.
Find a quiet place and lie flat on your back with a pillow under the head. Relax the shoulders, chest, legs.
Take 30 very deep, very fast breaths into the pit of the stomach and let it back out. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. The movement of each inhalation should look like a wave, filling up in the stomach and softly moving up through the lungs. Exhales follow the same movement, first emptying the stomach then the chest as air pours through the nose or pursed lips of the mouth.
At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the "natural conclusion," leaving about a quarter of the air in the lungs. Hold that breath for as long as possible.
Once you've reached your absolute breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again.
Repeat the entire pattern at least three times.
Tummo needs practice and can be difficult to learn from written instructions.
Chuck McGee, the WHM instructor, offers free online sessions every Tuesday morning at 6am Spanish Time. Sign up at https://www.meetup.com/Wim-Hof-Method-Bay-Area or log in through the Zoom platform: https://tinyurl.com/y4qwl3pm.
Instructions for the calming version of Tummo meditation can be found at :
SUDATSHAN KRIYA
This is the most powerful technique I've learned, and one of the most involved and difficult to get through. Sudarshan Kriya consists of four phases:
Om chants, breath restriction, paced breathing (inhaling for 4 seconds, holding for 4 seconds, exhaling for 6 seconds, then holding for 2 seconds), and finally, 40 minutes of very heavy breathing.
A few YouTube tutorials are available, but to get the motions correct. deeper instruction is highly recommended. The Art of Living offers weekend workshops to guide new students through the practice. See more at www.artofliving.org
YOGIC BREATHING
A standard technique for any aspiring pranayama student.
PHASE 1
Sit in a char or cross-legged and upright on the floor and relax the shoulders.
Place one hand over the navel and slowly breathe into the belly. You should feel the belly expand with each breath in, deflate with each breath out. Practice this a few times.
Next, move the hand up a few inches so that it's covering the bottom of the rib cage. Focus the breath into the location of the hand, expanding the ribs with each inhale, retracting them with each exhale. Practice this for about three to five breaths.
Move the hand to just below the collarbone. Breathe deeply into this area and imagine the chest spreading out and withdrawing with each exhale. Do this for a few breaths.
PHASE 2
Connect all these motions into one breath, inhaling into the stomach, lower rib cage, then chest.
Exhale in the opposite direction, first emptying the chest, the the rib cage, then the stomach. Feel free to use a hand and feel each area as you breathe in and out of it.
Continue this same sequence for about a dozen rounds.
These motions will feel awkward at first, but after a few breaths they get easier.
BOX BREATHING
Navy SEALs use this technique to stay calm and focused in tense situations. It's simple.
Inhale to a count of 4; hold 4; exhale 4; hold 4. Repeat.
Longer exhalations will elicit a strong parasympathetic response. A variation of Box Breathing to more deeply relax the body that's especially effective before sleeping is as follows:
Inhale to a count of 4; hold 4; exhale 6; hold 2. Repeat.
Try at least six rounds if necessary to make you feel sleepy.
BREATHHOLD WALKING
This technique increases carbon dioxide, and thus increases circulation in the body. It's not very enjoyable but it has many benefits.
Go to a grassy park, beach, or anywhere else where the ground is soft.
Exhale all the breath, then walk slowly, counting each step.
Once you feel a powerful sense of air hunger, stop counting and take a few very calm breaths through the nose while still walking. Breathe normally for at least a minute, then repeat the sequence.
The record for this technique is 130 steps. 40 is a good achievement however.
4-7-8 BREATHING
This technique, made famous by Dr. Andrew Weil, places the body into a state of deep relaxation. I use it on long flights to fall asleep.
Place the tongue just behind your upper teeth.
Take a breath in through your nose, then exhale though your mouth with a whoosh sound.
Close the mouth, place the tongue back behind your upper teeth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
Hold for a count of seven.
Exhale completely through your mouth, with a whoosh, to the count of eight.
Repeat this cycle for at four breaths. You can increase it to a maximum of eight cycles.
It can help you with cravings or falling asleep if you wake up in the night. Very powerful anti anxiety practice.
There is a step-by-step instructional on YouTube, which has been viewed more than five million times!
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