Breathing Cure Breathing Exercises Guided by Patrick McKeown | TAKE A DEEP BREATH

so this first exercise by the way there's 26 exercises in this so we're not going to get through them but we go through um this one is an interesting one and this is about breathing very very light so it's the opposite to what's commonly thought so say for example here you have your normal breathing pattern and the individual is taking a normal breath into their nose and naturally their nose an intruder knows naturally the nose and what we want to do here is we want to have a very soft and gentle inhalation almost at your breathing is imperceptible and at the top of the breath the total feeling of relaxation to the body and a prolonged and a relaxed exhalation and then after you breathe out you're taking a very soft and gentle inhalation through your nose really soft gentle inhalation through your nose and at the top of the breath a total feeling of relaxation to the body and a gentle and prolonged breath out and the instruction is we're sitting up straight in a chair or you could do a cross legged on the floor lie in your back and if you're sitting just to imagine there's a piece of string pulling you upwards um from the top of the back of your head you could have your hands and your chest and tummy or you could place your hands on your lap [Music] to observe your breath as it enters and leaves your nose feel the slightly colder air as it enters your nostrils and feel the slightly warmer air as it leaves your nose so it's really about bringing attention from the mind onto the breath and when you can feel your breathing begin to reduce the speed of each breath as it enters and leaves your nose so your breathing should be light it should be quiet and it should be calm slow down your breathing so that you feel hardly any air entering and leaving your nostrils so your breathing should be so quiet that the fine hair the fine hairs within the nostrils do not move now by slowing down the speed of your breathing with the intention of breathing less air into the body the goal is to create a feeling that you would like to take in more air so you're doing it correctly if you feel breathless or if you feel that you would like to take in more air or if you feel that you're not getting enough breath to create air hunger your breathing volume now should be less than what it was before you started but you shouldn't feel stressed so if the air hunger gets too strong take a rest for 20 seconds or so and then start off again so really the whole emphasis here is on focusing on the airflow coming in and out of the nose and really slowing down the speed of the breath as it enters the nostrils so your breathing is so smooth that the fine hairs within the nostrils do not move can you breathe in so quietly almost that you feel hardly any air coming into your nose can you take the littlest amount of air possible into your nose and then when you're breathing out have a really slow and relaxed exhalation the objective is to breathe less air and the objective is to feel air hunger do that for a few minutes now as you do that check the saliva in the mouth it's it's quite normal that when you do this exercise there's a number of things that are happening number one is it's a great meditation because when you are slowing down the speed of your breathing your mind is anchored onto the breath so from a meditative point of view it's really good and the mind is less of a tendency to wander so i think it's it's a great way to support mindfulness but the other thing is about this is that slowing down the breathing to breathe less air and you know that you're breathing less air if you feel air hunger so slow to breathe less air and you should feel air hunger an air hunger signifies that carbon dioxide is increased in the blood and as carbon dioxide is increasing your blood vessels dilate so i remember i was having cold hands and cold feet and i tried this was 20 years ago and i felt a warm a warmness coming into my hands and it's not just that your blood vessels going into the hands dilate but it's the 70 000 miles of blood vessels throughout the human body now the other thing about this is that you'll notice that most people will notice that they've increased water is live in the mouth and this is an indicator that we've activated the parasympathetic nervous system or we've have the body to bring the body into relaxation so people will often as well they feel drowsy so this is a very good exercise to do for people with insomnia and for people who are in sympathetic increased sympathetic drive or stress state so for you know i say to people with anxiety be careful with doing the exercise because the air hunger you know could could set off a bit of panic but you have to go very very easy with it now we can do a second variation of this and this is similar enough to the last one but instead of focusing on the breath in we're actually focusing on the exhalation so we are taking a slow breath in through the nose but the intent is really to have a low and long and prolonged exhalation now this is supposes you can think of the opera singers of old they were singing with a candle placed about 10 centimeters from their face and the intention of the the the candle of course was lighting so there was a candle flame there and the opera singer was to sing with such conservation of the bret that they didn't blow out the candle because the training involved and i suppose it's a recognition that there's a cost associated with hard breathing if you breathe hard it can bring on fatigue and any of your listeners who talk all day they will know well they're on a phone all day they may have meetings all day they may be teaching they may be in sales and at the end of the day they're pretty much exhausted they're wiped out and they're wiped out not because of the mental concentration but because of the act of talking and the impact that that's having on breathing so it's causing the person to breathe more this exercise is good for helping the biochemistry but also to stimulate the vagus nerve so you place your finger underneath your nose so that you can monitor the airflow from your nose and you're bringing your attention onto your finger and as you feel the warm air on your finger so it's coming from the breath gently slow down your breathing so that you can feel hardly any warm air onto your finger so you're taking a soft and slow breath into your nose and allow a gentle and prolonged breath out breathe so softly that you feel hardly any air blowing onto your finger imagine that your finger is a feather and that your breathing is so soft that the feather doesn't move so if you were to pretend that your finger is a feather and that your breathing is so light that the feather doesn't flutter the feather isn't moving and there's no need to hold your breath or to restrict your breathing it's really just paying attention to the airflow coming onto the finger and it's about breathing less air so the more warm air that you feel the harder you are breathing can you quiet and then soften your breathing to the point where you feel hardly any air on your finger you're doing the exercise correctly if you feel a tolerable need for air i need you to feel like you want to breathe in more air and you continue practicing that exercise for about four minutes or so and again the objective here is to breathe less air so these two exercises are focusing on the biochemistry now this is a third variation which is cupping the hands on the face i'm breathing in a very small amount of breath into the nose and a small amount of breath out now this is quite a tough one so you're cupping your hands on your face and the objective here is to breathe hardly any air so you're focusing on the airflow coming in and out of your hands and the more warmer air that you feel coming into your hands you know the harder you are breathing so what i would like you to do is to breathe in a flicker of air into your nose and a flicker of air out of your nose breathe in for one centimeter or half an inch and breathe out for one centimeter or half an inch breathe in for one centimeter half an inch breathe out for one centimeter half an inch breathe in for one centimeter breathe out for one centimeter so you're taking a flicker of air in and out of your nose and as you exhale that gas carbon dioxide enriched air into your hands you're rebreathing carbon dioxide into your lungs which increase the co2 in your lungs and increase the co2 in the blood so the purpose of that exercise is continue with the air hunger for about four minutes now we typically i'll always focus on the biochemistry first and then we focus on the biomechanics and here's where we have individuals they place their hands either side of the lower ribs and as they breathe in the intention is that they are pushing their lower ribs outwards but you shouldn't hear your breathing so it's often a mistake that's made when the focus is on improving the biomechanics of breathing the intention is that the you know oftentimes the student feels that they have to be taking these full big breaths and they don't because if you're taking full big breaths you're sacrificing the biochemistry you could be so with this the person has their hands either side of their lower ribs and as they breathe in their ribs are gently moving outwards and as they breathe out their ribs are gently moving inwards so as you breathe in the ribs are gently moving outwards and as you breathe out the ribs are gently moving inwards and as you breathe in the ribs are gently moving out and as you breathe out the ribs are gently moving in so this is breathing low or breathing deep in the true sense of the word that during the inhalation the diaphragm is moving downwards and as the diaphragm is moving downwards there's movement outwards to the sides to the back and to the front so we have to think of the core as a box and at the top of the core is the diaphragm and you have the you have the abs to the front you've got the spinal muscles to the back and you've got the pelvic floor to the bottom and then we bring in resonance frequency breathing and this is slowing down the respiratory rate to between 4.5 and 6.6 breaths per minute and this is about stimulating the vagus nerve so this is really important in terms of you know causing are helping with recovery so when we stimulate the vagus nerve it's been known since 1913 that by stimulating the vagus nerve it releases a substance called acetylcholine which is a neurotransmitter and this causes a slowing of the heart so somebody who wants to recover post physical exercise slow breathing especially your prolonged and relaxed exhalation but i'd just like to show you something else in this which is quite interesting and [Music] i'm just going to put in kevin tracy there's more to this you know back in 1998 there was a neurosurgeon called set kevin tracy in new york and he taught that if we could stimulate the vagus nerve we can reduce harmful inflammation and you can imagine the number of conditions that inflammation is playing a role and he was able to electronically stimulate the vagus nerve and he found that the nervous system could be used almost like a computer to trigger commands that stop a problem in its tracks and apparently tracy's colleagues were outside in the corridor placing bets that he wasn't going to achieve what he wanted to achieve so further trials confirmed tracing's tracy's findings using electronic implants to stimulate the vagus nerve in humans he produced a dramatic reduction and even remission in rheumatoid arthritis a condition with no cure so this helped to illuminate the vagal systems close into relationship with the inflammatory system so the first steps here is that the vagus nerve by secreting um so crucially ach acetylcholine the neurotransmitter secreted by the vagus nerve it blocks the release of many of the pro-inflammatory cytokines so these are cytokines are involved in producing inflammation if we can stimulate the vagus nerve can we reduce the production or can we reduce inflammatory cytokines and then the question to ask is how can we stimulate the vagus nerve and we had i had a we had as oxygen advantage instructors we had a seminar with dr jay wiles who is an expert in clinical i think his background is clinical psychology but he's worked with a lot of people with ptsd and with anxiety and he's also an oxygen advantage instructor and he was looking at the exercises from the oxygen advantage which is basically this book and asking which exercises can we improve heart rate variability nose breathing will increase heart rate variability breathing light increases heart rate variability breathing slow and breathing low so pretty much all of the exercises that we do in terms of functional breathing patterns can improve heart rate very badly now the other point that might just before we go on in terms of i would say to anybody you know if you are looking at breathing that the application is is enormous here breathing in asthma breathing for females diabetes epilepsy improving heart rate variability improving sleep panic disorder anxiety and racing mind post covered and there's protocols for each of these conditions as well as chapters so people can dig deeper into it so we have exercises as well then which are very popular at the moment to stress the body so there's exercise to improve focus and concentration and exercises to stress the body i'm gonna just go to a couple of them and i'm gonna go to exercise number 24 on page 87 here and the reason that we're looking at this exercise here is if you do fast full breaths which is a stressor to the body and then you exhale and you hold your breath it's very important that you recover your breathing by breathing light for at least three minutes afterwards and the other thing that i would say is only do these exercises if you're not pregnant and if you're in good health your bold score ideally should be greater than 25 seconds and the reason i talk about this is because it seems to be that individuals with a low bulk score when they do hyperventilation and breath holding their carbon dioxide levels aren't recovering and it could actually lower their sensitivity to carbon dioxide as opposed to improve it whereas an individual with a bold score above 25 seconds when they do hyperventilation and breath holding they seem to have a better recovery but i think it's very important that if we stress the body and you stress the body with the speed of the exhalation so in this instance it's a very fast exhalation that's the stressor whereas the previous exercises we had a really slow and relaxed exhalation that brings the body into relaxation so this exercise is a stressor we have an exhale hold exhale to functional residual capacity and only holding the breath until a moderate air hunger we don't want blood oxygen saturations dropping down to sixty percent to fifty percent to forty percent the reason being is we've never done this in a revolution and i don't know if i want to expose the body to such critically low o2 because i really wonder when is a good stressor becoming a bad stressor so we want to stress the body but we want to do it within limits and then we want to have recovery and this is where the breed light exercise is coming in here for three minutes and just i'll just show one more exercise as a stressor and this was taken from yaseen um sai weisser and i'm terrible at pronouncing his name but he's based in germany interesting guy for 35 years he's been practicing meditation and mixed martial arts and he used to do cage fighting before the rules come in so i think his first round would be five minutes and then they had a one minute rest and then they would fight until submission or knockout so it wasn't for the faint-hearted here's an exercise that came from him quite quite a useful exercise and this would be a good exercise to stress the body but it's not going to disturb everything so much so for example you have very short rapid breaths so you're exchanging a lot of air in dead space you're exercising the the breathing muscles you are stimulating the vagus nerve um you will you will activate a stress response here you start off at short breaths short breath in short breath out short breath in short breath out at a speed that you're comfortable with and then you increase the speed to between one and three breaths per second short fast breaths with movement of the diaphragm you do that for one minute and then you breathe light for one minute so you have the stressor you have recovery and then you do a second round stressor recovery and a third round stressor recovery and this is shaking the autonomic nervous system so you know this is just there are only a few exercises there's 26 exercise that we have just different variations of it but it'll kind of give people an insight into you know the potential here and you know that's where it's at you

Channel: TAKE A DEEP BREATH

Views: 53,255

Keywords: take a deep breath, breathwork, breathing exercises, patrick mckeown, james nestor, breath the new science of a lost art, tadb, the breathing cure, tadb clips, breathcast

Id: kJwhCCECRCM

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021