Breathe Your Way To Success: Techniques for Energy, Creativity, and Productivity
You breathe about 23,040 times a day, so why not make the most of it? The action has a direct impact on your energy levels. Read on for a few simple techniques for better brain function, recovery time, and sleep, along with less anxiety and fatigue. It’s the ultimate win-win biohack.
A remarkable body process, breathing sits on the cusp of conscious and unconscious action. You don’t have to think to breathe—fortunately—but you can control your breathing if you want to. It’s like a built-in walkie-talkie with the autonomic nervous system. You feel stressed (an unconscious response), you consciously direct your breathing and can calm down. There is much more we can do with our breathing, starting with understanding how to do it right.
Are You Breathing Too Much?
When I learned to dance the tango, one of my instructors used to say he was teaching us to walk again. In tai chi, it’s the same—you spend a lot of time focused on familiar movements as if you had never done them before. If we put a similar amount of attention into our breathing, the benefits can be astonishing.
Statistics show that 90% of us suffer some kind of respiratory issue, and many of us are breathing too much.
Inhaling oxygen launches a cascade of chemical and physiological processes that release energy in the cells. This is no laughing matter: your brain, a mere 2% of your body mass, uses 25% of your oxygen requirements. Oxygen also fuels your muscles, and how you bring it into your body determines how acidic or alkaline your blood is, which impacts your energy and your health.
The thing is, taking deep breaths is bull.
Larger volumes of air do not increase oxygen in the blood. No matter what, your body always makes sure the blood is saturated with oxygen.
However, for cells to use the oxygen in the blood, you need carbon dioxide. Receptors monitor blood CO2 and oxygen concentrations and keep tabs on the pH levels. Past a certain amount of CO2 , receptors stimulate breathing in order to get rid of the excess gas.
When you over-breathe, too much carbon dioxide washes out from your lungs, blood, tissues, and cells. If you over-breathe for an extended period of time, you lower your CO2 tolerance, which means those receptors flash red sooner, and you breathe more, creating a negative feedback loop.
The end result? You feel tired all the time. The problem is not a lack of oxygen in the blood, but that the blood is not releasing enough oxygen to tissues and organs, including the brain, and you feel wiped out.
Increase your CO2 tolerance and you reduce breathlessness and deliver oxygen more effectively to where it is needed.
Breathe Through Your Nose
Mouth breathing is culprit number one. It raises the heart rate and reduces the brain’s oxygen levels. It makes you tired, dizzy, grumpy, unfocused, and unproductive.
So breathe through your nose all the time—day and night, and during exercise.
Nose breathing increases oxygen uptake by 10 to 20% and, when done during physical exertion, strengthens the respiratory system and boosts CO2 tolerance.
Furthermore the nasal cavity produces nitric oxide, a good-health gas that plays an important role in opening and closing blood vessels, maintaining a stable physiological balance, neurotransmission, and immune defense. It’s a miracle molecule.
And, nasal breathing will help to ensure regular, calm, steady breathing using the diaphragm.
Breathe From the Belly
Taking deep breaths is not entirely wrong, on the condition that by deep you mean a breath that is abdominal, albeit gentle and quiet.
Lots of people breath from the upper chest. Your body associates upper-chest breathing with a stress response, while abdominal breathing relaxes the system.
Abdominal breathing is more efficient simply because of the shape of the lungs. It also assists with lymphatic drainage.
The idea then is to consciously breath from your belly until it becomes habit—slow, gentle, relaxed, quiet nose breathing with the diaphragm. So if you put a hand on your chest and the other on your belly, only your belly moves while you breath. Avoid, sighing, panting and mouth breathing.
Breathe Lightly
Traditional practices such as yoga, tai chi and qi gong insist on the importance of soft breathing, ideally “so smooth that the fine hairs within the nostrils remain motionless” according to Taoism. Effortless, rhythmic, soft nose breathing, paused on the exhale, leads to health and inner peace.
Occasionally, Stop Breathing
I love breath holding. Sometimes it makes me panicky, but when I overcome the anxiety, the rush of energy and calm and just plain sensation of power over my own body is so worth it.
Breath holding is part of many traditional practices. Pranayama practitioners, free divers, and breathwork experts like Wim Hof can hold their breath for over 20 minutes using breathing techniques that alter the pH of their blood. I reach a very modest 2 minutes on rare occasions, using Wim Hof breathing.
Holding long periods requires power breathing and other deep breathing techniques to prepare the body. And practice.
The benefits are many: better oxygen metabolism, waking up of little-used blood vessel so more blood gets to the brain and organs, a spike of adrenaline followed by fantastic calm. As few as 5 breath holds significantly improves the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. Performing just 3 to 5 breath holds of maximum duration can lead to a 2 to 4% increase in hemoglobin. Performing a breath hold after an exhalation lowers the oxygen saturation of the blood to simulate the effects of high-altitude training.
Holding the breath on the exhale also capitalizes on the benefits of nitric oxide by carrying the gas into the lungs rather than expelling it.
Beware. Do not hold your breath for so long you lose control of your breathing. It is important to resume breathing calmly.
Please don’t breath hold recklessly. Don’t put yourself into danger. Go slow. It’s the best way to make progress.
A Quick Breathing Hack
Box breathing. While retraining your breathing takes practice, there is one quick hack that has an immediate impact on calming the mind. Breathe in for a count of four (gradually increase the count with practice), hold for a count of four, breathe out for a count of four, and hold again for a count of four. Repeat.
Resources
Wim Hof Method. Wim Hof is a real-life superman who combines breathing exercises with cold exposure and mindset work to accomplish incredible feats. His techniques are very effective for generating more energy, improving overall energy balance, and the practice releases adrenaline, which releases energy immediately. Cold exposure trains blood vessels, directly stimulates the blood stream, increasing metabolic rate, increasing energy. Click here to find out more.
Soma Breath. This “movement” combines meditation, music and ancient breathing techniques, for those looking for an easy-to-access more spiritual approach. More here.
The Oxygen Advantage: The Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques for a Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter You by Patrick McKeown. Although a bit technical at times, there are great explanations and techniques to try in this book. Get it here (that’s an affiliate link, just so you know).