Why I trained in breathwork

The history

Until I learnt about the science of breathing, I really didn’t give breathing or how I breathed much thought.

If I ran up the stairs or if the gardening got a bit physical, it was just easier to open my mouth. No one told me not to!  I just didn’t think about it. We humans tend to take the easy option especially if we can’t see a reason not to.

The only other time I would think about breathing was if I was in an exercise class. If it ended with a relaxation the instructor might guide our attention to  follow the breath, perhaps breathing deeper or slower.  What I didn’t understand was that this mattered all day, every day, for every breath. That with every in-breath I took, my stomach and diaphragm should move out and down, and that the number of breath’s I took per minute was important.  Quite honestly I hadn’t understood any of this and yet it is a fundamental aspect of our physiology and therefore our health. 

The main reason

When I first trained in breathing the main reason I did so was because I knew that addressing oxidative stress, created as a by-product of metabolic processes, was critical for the body to function well. Our digestive system and the absorption of food is one the core metabolic processes. Your diet and your antioxidant balance is critical for this, but what about the oxidative stress caused by breathing? This is another essential metabolic process, perhaps even more important than food, given that most of us cannot survive more than a few minutes without it. What if, as well as ensuring sufficient antioxidant intake, you could minimise the creation of oxidative stress by breathing correctly?  It was this thought process that led me to explore breathwork.

Disordered breathing

How people breathe is frequently disordered, and this can have a negative impact on cellular and organ oxygenation, especially your muscles. This means cells and organs may not assimilate and process nutrients correctly or in sufficient amounts to function well. This can also impact any physical activity you undertake and especially if you are doing fitness or sports training or going to the gym. 

Poor breathing patterns also have a detrimental effect on the nervous system and your stress and anxiety levels, especially upper chest breathing. This is partly because it activates your fight/flight system but it’s also a chemical issue. Most of your alveoli are at the bottom of your lungs and if the breath is too shallow the oxygen doesn’t get to them.

Your heart rate variability measurement, which is how flexible and adaptable your heart is to changes in demand, is also affected by your breathing pattern. This makes sense as breathing and the heart are closely linked (see blog). There is even research to show that the number of breaths you take per minute affects your life span. Contrary to what you might think, breathing in lower levels of oxygen and taking fewer breaths per minute enhances longevity.  So, if you want to live longer you need to breathe better.

Key aspects of breathing

There are three key aspects to breathing:

Positive effects on the body and mind

There are many positive effects on your body and mind when functional breathing patterns are re-established. Here are a few to think about:

Refs: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12727135/

How breathing affects your heart

Heart health is something we often don’t think about until there is a problem. We all know that nutrition, exercise and stress management is important for heart health. Much less understood is that how you breathe impacts the heart. This is something you can train and ultimately have control over.  As the old saying goes ‘prevention is better than cure’! So lets find out how your breathing affects your heart function over time.

The heart and lungs work as a team.

The lungs oxygenate the body and remove carbon dioxide. The heart distributes this oxygen to every cell in the body via the blood. It then picks up the carbon dioxide to be exhaled by the lungs. This bi-directional exchange means that changing how you breathe influences how the heart behaves.

As you breathe in, your heart rate naturally speeds up. As you breathe out, it slows down. This normal rhythm is controlled by the vagus nerve which controls our autonomic nervous system (ANS). Our ANS runs all the automatic processes in the body which you never have to think about, but they keep you alive and functioning.

Your breathing rhythm

When this rhythm is strong and flexible, the nervous system works well. This means the heart can adapt to changes in demands placed upon it by activities, exercise, stress or emotions. When breathing is fast, shallow, or irregular, this rhythm weakens and puts more strain on the heart.

Breathing affects your blood chemistry

Breathing also changes carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels in the blood. CO₂ is not just a waste gas, it regulates blood flow and oxygen delivery.  When we breathe fast CO₂ levels drop, blood vessels constrict, and the heart must work harder to keep blood moving. If this becomes a habit, dysfunctional breathing patterns establish themselves affecting heart rate and blood pressure. This increases the workload on the heart, hampering its’ performance.

So how does breathing properly actually help?

Blood vessel relaxation and flexibility

Maintaining healthy CO₂ levels relaxes your blood vessels. This allows them to expand so the blood flow to the heart increases. This means the heart does not have to beat as fast or generate as much pressure to move blood around the body. Think of the toothpaste analogy or those tubes of filler we use when we are decorating. The smaller the hole in the tube the more pressure we have to put on the tube.

Improves heart rate variability (HRV)

Studies show that regular, paced breathing improves heart rate variability (HRV). This is a measure of how adaptable your heart is to changes in your body’s needs. A higher HRV has consistently been associated with lower cardiovascular (CVD) risk.

Improves vagal nerve function

This improves nervous system function and balance. This in turn reduces the stress load on the heart, improving it’s resilience.

Helps to normalise blood pressure

Slow breathing lowers the heart rate and both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, especially if you already have hypertension.

Oxygenates the heart

It’s not just about the air volume you breathe, it’s about how well you can oxygenate your heart.  Nasal breathing improves CO₂ and nitric oxide levels which stimulate blood vessel relaxation (see above). This improves gas exchange, circulation and blood flow which are all very important for heart function.

If you think your breathing might be disordered or you are struggling with your blood pressure or general breathlessness please get in touch to see if breathwork can help you.

Get in touch

Breathing for stress, anxiety and panic.

Anxiety, panic and a racing mind are classed as psychological problems but there is a strong biochemical link. These feelings can be triggered by chemical changes, as well as cause chemical changes. Breathing is connected to our nervous system and we influence our biochemistry with how we breathe. So if we train the breath, we can start to intentionally influence our nervous system through beneficial biochemistry, created with good breathing practices.

Stress of all kinds causes tension in the body. When we are stressed the body responds by tensing up.  Tension on the outside means tension on the inside so everything contracts including muscles, tissues, blood vessels and our airways. This constriction impedes the way our body functions and over time this tension affects how we breathe on a day-to-day basis. This is because we build neural pathways for breathing so poor breathing can become the habitual default pattern.

We can train the breath to calm the mind and oxygenate the brain so that we can think clearly. When you bring your attention to your breath this helps to quiet the mind and reduce over thinking. This brings us into the present moment which is usually fine. Anxiety and over thinking is usually about the future (worry) or about the past, perhaps regret or depression over something that has happened.  When we quiet the mind we create space between our thoughts so we can question their validity and allow new ideas to surface.

We may not always be able to control sources of stress in our life. We can however work with our breath to interrupt our emotional and mental reaction to the stress.  These reactions will otherwise continue to stimulate our stress response and restrict how our body functions.

Remember there are many sources of stress but they all generate the same type of reaction in the body. It doesn’t matter if it’s from toxins, poor food quality, negative emotions and feelings or illness and injury. The body’s physiological response is the same regardless of the cause.

The human body has a great response mechanism called the fight or flight response. This serves us well for acute short bursts of stress.  You may have heard of the book ‘why zebra’s don’t get ulcers’. If they survive a predator attack they shiver and shake to process the stress and then return to their baseline parasympathetic state (rest and digest). Unfortunately the pace of modern life tends to generate chronic, low grade persistent stress on a daily basis.  Without any kind of stress management our baseline will often reset to a far higher baseline and a constant pervading sense of anxiety.  This means our reaction times get shorter and shorter and our fuse trips faster and more frequently. We weren’t built to withstand this continual, chronic stress but nature always has a solution.

The exercises I teach work on your daily functional breathing pattern.  I teach you to breathe lightly, slowly and deeply.  This increases your tolerance to the build up of carbon dioxide and nitric oxide.  These molecules cause your airways and blood vessels to relax and dilate and make the oxygen you breathe in, accessible to the body.  This means all of your automatic functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and digestion can function better.

You can rewire your breath and the neural pathways for breathing to:

When you work with the breath to relax the body you stimulate your vagus nerve. This one nerve controls whether you are in fight or flight or rest and digest. Rest and digest is the parasympathetic nervous system which controls all those automatic functions of the body which keep you alive, the autonomic nervous system (ANS). When you rewire your breathing you can begin to work with your ANS rather than hampering it with poor breathing patterns. Enhance and stimulate your health, rather than inadvertently damaging it.

For more information please do drop me an email or give me a call. I offer private breath training but I also have a new course coming soon. Please get in touch as soon as possible if you are interested.

Do you breathe correctly?

This blog explains how to identify if your breathing might be disordered and why you might consider doing breathwork to improve your health.

There are some very common signs and symptoms that your breathing could be improved which include:

  1. Cold hands and feet
  2. Stressed or tense during the day
  3. Yawning, sighing, and taking big breaths
  4. Mouth breathing especially at night
  5. A low BOLT score
  6. Fast breathing

If you notice any of these being relevant to you, it's best to get in touch with me, or your physio or health practitioner for assistance. I discuss each aspect below in more detail.

Cold hands and feet

This is usually attributed to poor circulation.  The organs of circulation are the heart and your blood vessels.  To allow more blood to circulate the blood vessels need to dilate.  CO2  in the smooth muscle cells lining the blood vessels acts as a vasodilator. When we increase our tolerance to the build-up of CO2  this enhances vascular function so how you breathe ultimately influences your body temperature.

Stressed or tense?

This can be triggered by all kinds of issues and seems to be the theme of modern life.  When we are stressed the body responds by tensing up.  Tension on the outside means tension on the inside so everything contracts including muscles, tissues, blood vessels and our airways. This constriction impedes the way our body functions and over time this tension affects how we breathe on a day-to-day basis. This is because we build neural pathways for breathing so poor breathing can become the default pattern.

We may not always be able to control sources of stress in our life. We can however work with our breath to interrupt our emotional and mental reaction to the stress.  These reactions will otherwise continue to stimulate our stress response and restrict how our body functions.

When you work with the breath to relax the body you stimulate your vagus nerve. This one nerve controls whether you are in fight or flight or rest and digest. When you are in fight or flight this is “emergency mode” and not a time for your autonomic nervous system (ANS)to stimulate growth and repair.    You don’t start long term building projects when your life is being threatened. By switching the body to rest and digest your automatic functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and digestion can begin to function properly. When you work on your breath you rewire these neural pathways to something more optimal for the body.

Yawning, sighing, big breaths

These can all be signs that your body is trying to adjust its’ chemical balance.   Unfortunately they can become habits with associated neural pathways which can be difficult to break. Over time this can alter the gas exchange taking place and affect our breathing chemistry namely oxygen, nitric oxide and CO2.  This in turn changes your body’s pH balance, forcing the body to make adjustments to facilitate homeostasis.

Mouth breathing

This is detrimental for several reasons:

Low BOLT score

This is indicative of disordered breathing see here and here for how to take your BOLT score. A minimum of 25 is preferable.

Fast breathing

How fast we breathe affects how quickly we off load CO2.  We need to have some tolerance to CO2  build-up because oxygen is released from haemoglobin in the blood, in the presence of CO2. If you breathe too fast the oxygen often doesn’t reach the lower lungs where most of the alveoli are. This reduces the opportunity for oxygen to enter our blood stream and to reach our cells and tissues.

Health issues and poor breathing

The health issues associated with poor breathing are numerous and include the following: asthma; exercise performance; hormonal issues; covid; blood pressure; pain and fibromyalgia; diabetes; insomnia; snoring and sleep apnoea; anxiety and panic disorders.

Physiological benefits of Oxygen Advantage

It’s one technique with many powerful benefits:

Open airways  Increases vagal tone  
Opens blood vessels  Improves your ANS function  
Increases oxygen to tissues  Increases your heart rate variability  
Helps support blood pressure levelsExpands lung function

If you are worried about your breathing or just interested in finding out more you can take the breathing quiz on my website or simply give me a call on 07740 876233 or drop me an email to find out more.