From the moment we are born, we are taught fundamental things to ensure our survival in this realm. We’re taught to walk, talk, drink and eat, and even when to sleep. But no one teaches us how to breathe. Breathing is just one of those things we assume we know how to do, because after all, it’s just an autonomic process, a thing we do that we don’t even have to think about. And whilst this is true, why has such little attention been placed on learning more about the one thing that would ensure our demise if we didn’t do it for a period of time? Just because we can breathe in and out without focusing any attention on it, does this mean the way in which we are breathing is fully effective within our life?
Absolutely not!
Breath is our 'Life Force Energy.' Without it, we wouldn’t last long! Studies now show that people who are more inclined to breathe through their mouth rather than their nose are losing out on a plethora of health benefits and potentially causing more harm than good. Facial structural changes, posture changes, snoring, headaches, decreased lung function, immune system function, cardiovascular health amongst others, have all be linked to mouth breathing. So it's not a simple a case of just breathing in and out, there are many ways our breath can be optimised.
What are the benefits of nasal breathing?
Nasal breathing plays a crucial role in supporting overall health and well-being on both a physiological and psychological level.
Improved Oxygenation: Nasal breathing allows air to be filtered, humidified, and warmed before it enters the lungs. This process helps optimize oxygen exchange and ensures that the body receives an adequate supply of oxygen, essential for cellular function and energy production.
Nitric Oxide Production: Breathing through the nose releases nitric oxide, a gas molecule with potent antimicrobial properties that acts as a vasodilator, dilating blood vessels, lowering blood pressure, enhancing oxygen uptake in the lungs, improving overall cardiovascular health and improved immune system function.
Vagus Nerve Activation: Nasal breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, a key component of the parasympathetic nervous system. Activation of the vagus nerve promotes relaxation, reduces stress, supports digestion, immunity, and overall well-being.
Enhanced Lung Function: Nasal breathing encourages the use of the diaphragm and engages the lower lobes of the lungs more effectively than mouth breathing. This improves lung capacity, strengthens respiratory muscles, and reduces the risk of respiratory conditions such as asthma and bronchitis. It stops our lungs becoming lazy!
Can Breathwork help you meditate?
For me personally, all of the physiological benefits above have just been an added bonus. The number one benefit breathwork has brought to my life, is the ability to calm my mind and meditate. This in itself has been life changing for me!
I had sold myself the story that I just wasn’t capable of meditating. How in the world was I supposed to clear my mind when every time I sat down to try, a dumper truck of thoughts would empty into my head?! I believed the lie that it was impossible for me to control these thoughts, and I just would never be that person that meditated. However, through daily breathwork practice, I soon discovered that it was just a story, a lie I chose to believe, and an excuse I had made up in my own head in way of avoiding things that had happened or were happening within my life.
Focusing solely on the breath, how it flows into the nasal cavity, how it fills the belly and all the way up to the top of the lungs, how your sides begin to expand to facilitate the breath, and how it feels emptying everything out, soon pushes out all those random thoughts that try to make their way in to take you away from that precious present moment. The breath can help shift your body out of the sympathetic nervous system “fight or flight” and into the parasympathetic nervous system’s “rest and digest” state, quickly. It allows you to become the observer of the thoughts within your mind, rather than the slave. It creates space within your head, and it’s within that space where magic starts to happen, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I teach 15 different Pranayama breathing techniques, all of which hold their own unique benefits, but all leading to that state of being in that precious, present moment. Breathwork meditation can cultivate a greater sense of balance and inner peace. The awareness that comes with going inwards can improve mental clarity, pull you away from the feelings and thoughts of negativity, self deprecation, stress, anxiety or anything else that holds you back in life and stops you from feeling a love for life and a gratitude for everything that you are or have. For me, as someone that felt trapped in the darkness of PTSD for 5 years, it’s been truly liberating!
The Ethereal Breath Program provides you with the fundamental breathwork techniques to start you on
your journey to a calmer, healthier, happier, stress free life. As a coaching program however, it’s not just about training you to breathe. I incorporate 47 years of 'colourful' life experiences along with extensive studies within Mindfulness and Breathwork to provide you with the tools to help you make sense of where you’re at right now in your life. Tools to help you change things that perhaps you’re not happy with. Guidance into helping you achieve your desired state of mind, state of body, state of health, and the confidence to know that you are capable of incorporating these small changes daily, with the knowledge and understanding that you are so much more powerful than this world has allowed you to believe!
The Ethereal Breath program is available in group sessions online or as a private 121 coaching package. And with the popularity and convenience of most things being held online, my breathwork mediation classes will soon be moving online, allowing anyone, anywhere, to tap into a session at their own convenience.
I'll be going into more detail with specific breathing techniques in future blogs. but for now, just know, life really is truly beautiful, when you are able to take a step back, take a moment, and just breathe...
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