5 Ways To Improve Your Breathing with James Nestor

so really the only people who could benefit for breathing correctly are people who breathe so if you don't breathe then you probably won't get much benefit out of learning how to breathe better hi my name is james nesser i'm the author of breath the new science of a lost art and these are five ways to improve your breathing [Music] stop breathing through your mouth so breathing through your mouth isn't gonna kill you it's going to allow you to get enough oxygen to survive but just surviving is different from being healthy so compensation is different from really celebrating in vibrant health so the difference between the mouth and nose there are numerous differences but the main ones are the nose is the filter this is our first line of defense for the body the nose also heats up air it pressurizes it it moistens it and it conditions it so that by the time that air gets to our lungs we can extract about 20 percent more oxygen breathing through our nose than we can equivalent breaths through the mouth if you think that's not going to make a difference throughout the day throughout your life you're crazy when you start looking at so many chronic ailments from asthma to allergies to even anxiety and how they are directly tied to the way in which you breathe and oftentimes they are tied to how we tend to over breathe you start to understand that having that extra pressure and resistance in your breath is so essential to calming your body down filtering that air and allowing yourself to work at peak efficiency and when we walk through the day just for one we're not filtering that air but we're also taking in way too much air which stresses the body out so a lot of you breathing through your mouth right now may be thinking this guy is crazy i breathe through my mouth everyone i know breathe through their mouths what is crazy is to look at 5400 other mammals on the planet right now and look at how they're breathing dogs breathe through their mouths when they are thermoregulating to offload heat but no other animal is an obligate mouth breather for a reason it is terrible for our health it affects how your face will look it makes you more susceptible to periodontal disease it creates hyperventilation it can stress you out i can give you a whole laundry list of problems associated with it the science is very clear don't breathe through your mouth breathe through your nose as often as you can use your nose so if you were to take an x-ray of your head which is something i've done you would notice something at the front of your face you would notice that we have all of these crazy structures right at the front of our face these structures take up the equivalent space of a billiard ball if you could just imagine putting a billiard ball in the middle of your head those structures aren't there randomly when we breathe air through our nose we're forcing this air through a gauntlet of different passageways where that air is purified and where that air is heated and pressurized see animals that live in shells use their shells to keep out invaders to keep themselves safe we use our noses to do the exact same thing so how we breathe affects every system of the body it affects how your heart beats it affects your circulation it affects digestion it affects how your brain operates so if we are breathing in a dysfunctional way if we're taking in way too much air overworking ourselves all the time we put these other systems of our body in a state of stress and if you don't believe me just try to hyperventilate right now for about 10 to 20 seconds and see how you feel afterwards many of us won't be spending all of our days in the state of acute hyperventilation but we will be over breathing and eventually our bodies will break down so this is why we want to breathe through our noses we want to filter air especially if we live in an environment with pollution or allergens or covid or wherever else we want that air to be moistened we want that air to be pressurized because we want to breathe fewer breaths but to obtain more oxygen in each breath so that is efficiency why would we unnecessarily be overworking ourselves all day long we don't want to do that we want to be in a state of calm and efficiency and that's what breathing through the nose helps us do improve your lung capacity there was this fascinating study done about 40 years ago where they looked at all of this data from about 5 000 different subjects and they found that the number one marker of longevity wasn't genetics it wasn't diet it was lung capacity the larger our lungs are the more efficiently and healthy they are operating the longer we will live so how do you fix this if you have lungs that are ailing or if you're older and your lungs start to shrink which is what happens to everybody after the age of about 35 well you can fix it by breathing properly and you can help yourself breathe properly by having proper posture and breathing very slow and low breaths this isn't pushing it too hard this is breathing in this almost imperceptible way where you take very calm and controlled and rhythmic breaths this helps you retain your lung capacity as you age and it helps your body stay in a calm state and more efficiently get oxygen with each breath so one of the things that you can do to improve your lung capacity would be to exercise even mild to moderate exercise helps us retain lung capacity we can also do something called yoga which was a technology of breathing before it had any vinyasa flows so the yoga most of us are doing today was invented about a hundred years ago the original yoga was about sitting in a position and controlling your breath so by controlling your breath and keeping flexible in this area you can allow your lungs to inflate and deflate to their maximum potential and that's exactly what we want to do throughout the day slow down inhaling and exhaling slowly have numerous benefits one of those benefits is you are sending signals to your brain that you're in a calm state so about 80 of the messages between the brain and the body come from the body to the brain so if you are hunched over and stressed out and you're breathing like this you are sending your brain alarm signals that there is a problem that you need to be ready to fight or run away from something you're also unleashing all these different hormones and adrenaline to allow you to be awake and alert well we don't need to be awake and alert all the time during the day that leads to chronic inflammation and so many other issues so by breathing slowly you can take over these systems you can control your nervous system in many ways to send your brain signals that you're relaxed and in a safe place and when you do that the rest of the body and the brain responds the great thing about breathing is it's so easy so when it comes time to slow down your breathing you just simply slow down your breathing for some people that means breathing into account of about three and out to account of about three other people are comfortable with extending that which is great but one key little trick i like to use is to inhale to a count of about three and then extend your exhale to account of about six or eight when you do this you further relax the body and you elicit a parasympathetic response and you can measure this by measuring what happens to your heart rate when you tend to extend your exhales measuring what happens to your blood pressure and you can just feel it throughout your body as well and this is something you can use anytime anywhere so slow down your breathing doing so will calm your body down and send those signals to your brain that you are in a safe place and that you can relax and it will also balance your levels of co2 and oxygen so that you will be able to utilize more of that oxygen as it enters into your bloodstream hold your breath so breath holding is both good and bad when we hold our breath unconsciously it's very bad and an estimated 80 of office workers do this what we do is we sit down and we see all these emails and then our phones are blowing up we become stressed out we hold our breath then we breathe too much hold our breath again if you're doing anything in a way that's stressing your body out eight hours a day 10 hours a day 12 hours a day it's going to eventually catch up with you breath holding can also be very beneficial to you because when you hold your breath you increase your levels of carbon dioxide and by increasing your tolerance over time for carbon dioxide you can learn how to calm your body down and actually increase athletic performance it's not very easy at the beginning it seems so counter-intuitive a lot of people say oh i need to keep breathing because i need oxygen but you'll notice something when you hold your breath and look at your oxygen levels they don't go anywhere for a very long amount of time it takes a couple minutes for your oxygen to really be hitting some some serious levels of deficiency so by holding your breath what you're doing is just controlling your respiration you're bringing yourself more deeply into your body and you can then use those breath holds as tools to help you perform better or enter states of focus or even heat yourself up when you're cold i think the number one thing i would like people to take away is that things don't have to be complicated in order for them to be effective and in some cases transformative doing very simple breathing tweaks throughout the day and even before sleep before you study before a workout can have a transformative effect this seems impossible it seems too simple to be true until you spend years looking at the science until you talk to hundreds and hundreds of people who have helped take control of their own health and their own sicknesses by helping take control of their own breathing that's what i've discovered and i think you'll find the same as true for yourself thanks for watching you can buy my book breath on audiobook ebook hardcover and paperback in the link below this description and don't forget to subscribe to penguin for more videos like this

Channel: Penguin Books UK

Views: 140,756

Keywords: Penguin, Penguin Books, Penguin Books UK, James Nestor, James Nestor Breath, james nestor breathing exercises, James Nestor improve your breathing, James Nestor 5 ways, improve breathing, 5 ways to breathe better, better breathing, breathing exercises, breathing explained, breathing expert, james nestor breathing techniques, james nestor how to, how to breathe properly, 5 ways to improve your breathing, James nestor book, James nestor penguin, Penguin 5 ways

Id: f6yAY1oZUOA

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022