The Power of Your Breath

Welcome to Chapter #3 on “Five Simple Principles for Better Breathing.”

(Chapter #1 focuses on “How Poor Breathing Impacts Your Health” while Chapter #2 is all about “How Breathing Works.”)

Let’s review the five principles Anders shares with us:

1. “You should breathe in and out through the nose.” (Note: “when inhaling through the mouth, the air reaching our lungs is colder, drier, and saturated with viruses and bacteria. In other words, it’s as natural to breathe through your open mouth as it is to eat with your nose.”)

2. “Breathe with your diaphragm—abdominal breathing.” (Note: “We use the term abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing because sometimes the term deep breathing is misunderstood and it is assumed that each breath should be large and powerful, which isn’t the case. Optimal breathing allows the air you inhale to reach the lower part of your lungs while the actual breath itself is not large.”)

3. “A slow and relaxed breathing.” (Note: “I can’t think of a single situation when being tense and stressed is advantageous. When I want to achieve something it’s obviously good to be alert, focused, concentrated, and relaxed, which is not the same as being stressed and tense. … Regardless of what we wish to achieve, we will perform better if we are relaxed.”)

4. “Rhythmic breathing.” (Note: “Breathing should be rhythmic. Rhythms are everywhere; everything in the universe has a rhythm—the sea waves, days/nights, seasons, moon, etc. … Optimal breathing patterns follow a rhythm that is regular, and it is in rhythm that we find comfort.”)

5. “Quiet and reduced breathing volume.” (Note: “Our breathing should be quiet and small, i.e., reduced breathing volume. … Noisy breathing is not natural. … It’s also common for us to breathe through our mouth while talking, which may affect our body negatively since in our society today we generally talk excessively and breathe incorrectly. If your profession involves speaking a lot, it’s especially important to consider how you breathe, both at work and privately.”)

It’s funny because as I was reading this (and the rest of the book) while comparing his tips to the other tips we’ve explored and share in our work together (from +1s to Breathing 101 and our Mastery Series), I realized that I *think* Anders could have (and perhaps should have) had SIX principles. Then I realized we could expand our 1 + 2 + 3 approach to make it a Big 3 (x2) keeping with our theme of Big 3s. :)

The missing principle in those Top 5? EXTEND YOUR EXHALE. Anders talks about it a LOT.

It’s a key tip in the next chapter on “Retraining Your Breathing” where he tells us: “Your exhalation is linked to relaxation, so by extending your exhalation and the pause you increase your body’s ability to relax and thereby reach deeper relaxation. An additional benefit of prolonged exhalation is that it has a positive effect on your inhalation, since it reaches deeper.”

(btw: The tip right before that one to retrain your breathing? Tape your mouth shut.

Which leads us to the new weird thing I’m testing out after reading this book. As I mentioned in our Notes on Breath, I added chewing (mastic) gum to my mouth taping. After reading this book, I started using the “Relaxator” product Anders created that Alexandra had purchased forever ago. It’s a tool to help train that extended expiration.)

So… The Optimize Big 3 (x2) of Breathing now goes something like this:

1. In through your nose.

2. Down into your belly.

3. Extend your exhale so it’s slightly longer that your inhale.

While you keep it:

1. Slow and relaxed.

2. Rhythmic.

3. Quiet/mellow.

Let’s take a nice, relaxed, slow and rhythmic breath in through our nose, down into our bellies and back out through our nose with an exhale that’s slightly longer than our inhale… Ahhh….

P.S. Anders thanks Patrick McKeown “for inspiring me in such a humble way and for sharing all his knowledge of breathing in general and the Buteyko Breathing Method in particular.”

As we’ve discussed, Patrick is my go-to guy for all things breathing. His book The Oxygen Advantage remains my #1 recommendation (now tied with Breath) and we’re honored to have his wisdom as a guest faculty member/Luminary in our Heroic Coach program where he’s shared his top tips and coached our Coaches.

Here’s how he puts it: “This philosophy of effortless breathing is echoed by authentic teachers of Indian yoga and traditional Chinese medicine. I use the word authentic in order to differentiate practitioners who have a deep knowledge of breathing and how it affects physiology from those who don’t. Unlike many modern Western teachers of yoga, who instruct students to breathe hard in order to remove toxins from the body, authentic teachers know that when it comes to breathing, less is more. The traditional Chinese philosophy of Taoism succinctly describes ideal breathing as ‘so smooth that the fine hairs within the nostrils remain motionless.’ True health and inner peace occurs when breathing is quiet, effortless, soft, through the nose, abdominal, rhythmic, and gently paused on the exhale. This is how human beings naturally breathed until modern life changed everything.”

Plus: “To bring air down into the depths of the lungs, it is not actually necessary to take a big breath, as even the quietest of breaths will activate the diaphragm. When you are practicing abdominal nasal breathing, you should not be able to see or hear your breath during rest.”

That’s a key tip from the chapter on how to retrain our breathing.

We talked about this in our Notes on James Nestor’s Breath where he describes the optimal “J shaped” posture (think of a Greek statue) vs. the “S-shaped” posture (think of someone hunched over their smartphone).

Quick check in: How’s YOUR posture?

Remember: How we sit and stand affects not only our ability to breathe properly (aka, deeply into our lungs) but also how we think and feel. And, remember: Our feelings follow our behaviors at LEAST as much as the other way around.

As David Reynolds puts it in Constructive Living: “Depression can be created by sitting slouched in a chair, shoulders hunched, head hanging down. Repeat these words over and over: ‘There’s nothing anybody can do. No one can help me. I’m helpless. I give up.’ Shake your head, sigh, cry. In general, act depressed and the genuine feeling will follow in time… Feelings follow behavior.”

Echoing this wisdom, Anders tells us to try this for ourselves: “Adopt a slumped posture with shoulders pointing inwards, your head leaning forward, and with your shoulders sloping. Try at the same time to think positive thoughts and feel feelings of joy. Certainly it’s hard! It’s easier to think of misery and feel depressed. Now, try doing the opposite. Sit up and align your spine, so that your ears, upper arms and hips are in a vertical line. Try to feel depressed at the same time. It’s not very easy is it? When you straighten your back into a more upright position, your breathing improves automatically, and the inhaled air ends up deeper down in your abdomen. Your thoughts and emotions are affected positively and it’s also easier to breathe through your nose. Remember that improved oxygenation continuously provides more energy in a positive spiraling effect.”

In short: FLIP THE SWITCH.

Invite the Optimus-best version of you to the party (“Hi, Optimus!!”) as you sit up/stand up nice and tall (pulling that thread through your head) accessing all that power and poise and confidence that’s ALWAYS ALREADY there just waiting for you to activate it.

P.S. Want to Optimize your “oral posture”?

Remember: “Magic spot, buddy!” :)

That’s from Chapter #9: “Breathe Well, Sleep Well” which is PACKED with practical tips on how to Optimize our sleep.

Can you guess Pro Tip #1? Tape your mouth.

If breathing through our noses during the days is so important, OF COURSE it’s at least as important to breathe through our noses at night, eh? Yep.

Which is why Anders tells us: “A classic tip to ensure that your mouth is closed is to apply surgical tape over your mouth at night. People are surprised at the positive outcome of this technique, which is very simple and inexpensive. Give mouth taping at least a week, in order to allow you to have the opportunity to notice results.” (One more time: I currently use this tape.)

Another powerful tip? LOSE WEIGHT.

As Anders says: “Being overweight is common among people with sleep problems, and it’s particularly prevalent in people with a short, thick neck, as the extra weight causes tighter airways in the throat and neck. A big stomach may also contribute to sleep problems as the extra girth leaves less room for the diaphragm and lungs to expand, which results in shallow breathing.”

He also recommends you sleep on your side. He tells us: “The best sleeping position is on your side, as this allows your airways to be kept open and dilated, making the process of breathing less demanding. Sleeping on your side also puts less stress on your circulatory system and reduces your likelihood of experiencing reflux. If you have trouble sleeping on your side, then lying on your stomach is a better alternative than sleeping on your back.” <- Good to know.

But… The most powerful Idea here? The reminder that if we run our brains on turbo-mode all day every day, we’re going to have a REALLY hard time turning our brains OFF when we want to go to sleep—resulting in laying there wondering why our minds are buzzing when we want to sleep and/or waking up in the middle of the night then laying there wondering why our minds are buzzing when we want to sleep.

It’s not complicated. We need to practice turning our brains OFF during the day. Rather than compulsively reach for your phone to check out Instagram (or email or whatever) every time you get a spare second, why not take a deep breath (or ten) instead?

Anders tells us: “Daily activities provide our brain with a lot of stimuli to process. Many of us have forgotten what it means to be fully relaxed, and we are not aware of how much impact radio, television, newspapers, and advertising have on our mental activity. We are constantly fed with problems, violence, and how we should behave and look, which makes most of us feel anxious, fearful, angry, or worried that we are not good enough. Such programming happens in stages and often goes unnoticed, but the effects are very hard on the mind, body and spirit. Try taking a break from media for a few days, or just take a walk without your music or mobile phone. Focus on what you hear and see around you, instead of the thoughts in your head. Then reflect on how it feels to get some distance from the noise.”

Amen. After the break, how about a new philosophy? Digital Minimalism 101 perhaps?

That’s from the final chapter “How Conscious Breathing Changed My Life.” I smiled as I read that story about ONE person showing up at his first event and the fact he SOLD HIS HOUSE to continue studying. One of the things I love to reflect on is the hero’s journey that the teachers we admire had to take as they dedicated their lives to their purpose.

Robert Greene’s Mastery, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity, and Stephen Cope’s The Great Work of Your Life all come to mind. (Check out all those Notes if you haven’t yet. I think you’ll love them as much as I did just re-reading each of them AGAIN.)

Mihaly: “Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are unanimous: They all love what they do. It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.”

Stephen: “Having first named and claimed our dharma, we next begin to systematically organize all of our life’s energies around our calling.”

Robert: “No good can ever come from deviating from the path that you were destined to follow.”

How about you? You on YOUR heroic quest? Here’s to rocking it one breath at a time. TODAY.