The Breathing Technique That Saved My Life

In this video, I'm going to teach you the breathing method that has literally saved my life. It's helped me to cure my insomnia, my panic attacks, and it's given me back my mental clarity and my energy. So much so that I've decided to dedicate my life to teaching it and to spreading knowledge about Buteyko breathing.

Now this breathing method isn't that well known. It's surprising because of the health benefits, but on the other hand, it's quite unique in that rather than breathing more air, we breathe less air. And that's quite different to a lot of the breathing approaches you'll find out there on the internet.

So where does this idea of breathing less air come from? Well it was discovered by a Ukrainian medical doctor in the 50s called Dr Konstantin Buteyko. When he was doing his rounds around the hospital, he noticed that the sick patients tended to breathe more heavily and more quickly.

And the closer they were to death, the worse their breathing became. It became more and more visible and faster. But what was more interesting is that when he was involved in doing some breathing assessments with patients who'd come in with asthma and high blood pressure, When they were asked to do these breathing exercises as part of the examination, they often became unwell.

They started to feel more out of breath, they started to feel faint, they went pale. So Dr Buteyko had this simple theory. What if heavy breathing wasn't a result of illness?

What if it was the cause? What if breathing more air was making all of these people sick? Now Buteyko himself was suffering from illness.

He had a malignant form of hypertension, high blood pressure. And so he started to experiment on himself. He would take slightly smaller breaths, he would breathe less air, and to his surprise he started to notice a reduction in his symptoms.

His headache reduced, some of the pain in his body began to subside. And so with the consent of his patients in the hospital, especially the asthma patients, he started working with them and showing them how to reduce the size of their breathing to breathe less air. And the results were magical.

Some of the patients would reduce their symptoms within a few minutes. These were patients who'd been sick for years. They might have been in the hospital bedridden for months.

And then what was even more exciting is, as the patients continued to do these breathing exercises over the days and the weeks, their overall symptoms began to subside. Again, patients who'd been sick for years were miraculously cured by this particular breathing approach. Now of course, Buteyko doesn't work for all illnesses, it doesn't work for everything, But Buteyko and his team continued their research.

And they found that there were over 150 different illnesses that could be caused by over breathing. And by breathing less, they could significantly reduce the symptoms of, or even cure, these illnesses. Now all of this might seem a little bit strange to you.

You've probably been taught to take bigger breaths to get in more oxygen. But actually, we now know that that doesn't work. Because of something called the Bohr effect, it's actually more effective to breathe slightly less air than we would normally do.

This increases levels of carbon dioxide in the blood, and this both improves blood flow and the release of oxygen into the cells of your body. I'll put some links in the description to the science, because I appreciate that you might be sceptical. What I'd like to do now is guide you through the exercise for five minutes so that you can experience it for yourself, and then hopefully that will convince you a little bit more.

So getting yourself set up in a nice upright posture, you can do it sitting on a chair, on a meditation cushion, or even standing like I'm doing now. Imagining there's a piece of thread attached to the top of your head, it's just creating some length in your spine, just feeling some space open up. around your ribs and your diaphragm.

The mouth is closed. You can have your eyes open or closed. If you have your eyes open, just having a soft open gaze.

You might find it helpful to bring the palms of your hands onto your body. One hand just above your navel and one on your chest. And then just letting your shoulders drop down.

The mouth is closed and we're just breathing gently and quietly through the nose. So no big breaths. And then on each out breath, just allowing your body to relax.

So relaxing your jaw. And then your shoulders drop down away from your ears. Allowing all the muscles in your chest to relax.

And allowing your belly to relax. So belly. Soft like jelly.

So this is level one, just relaxing the muscles in your body will cause you to breathe less, that's the most gentle way. But what we're really looking to do is create a feeling of a shortage of air, a gentle air hunger. So if you don't already feel that, just begin to soften and slow your breathing a little bit more.

So make your breathing maybe Just 10 percent slower, 10 percent lighter than you would normally do. Just until you start to feel a gentle shortage of air. Don't let it get too strong.

You want to feel like, say if you're out for a brisk walk, you're walking up a little bit of a hill, but you don't want it so strong that your heart is racing or your diaphragm is twitching. So just finding a gentle balance. So the in breath is just a little bit slower and softer than normal, and then it's a gentle, relaxed, slightly slower out breath as well.

So the out breath, a little bit slower than the in breath. Your breathing should be quiet, you shouldn't be able to hear it, so just softening it so it's quieter. If you put your finger underneath the tip of your nose, just softening the flow of air so that you can hardly feel it.

If the air hunger feels too strong, if you start to tense up or feel stressed, just take a little break for 30 seconds. So there's a bit of a knack to this, it takes a little bit of practice. So we're just aiming to breathe a little bit less air than what you normally do.

As you breathe less, carbon dioxide pools in the blood, pools in the body, enhances oxygen release, it opens up the airways, and over time it starts to reset the breathing centre in the brain, the medulla oblongata. If you keep doing the breathing exercise day after day, Then your 24 7 breathing becomes slower and gentler. Imagine what that would feel like, feeling calmer, having easier breathing 24 7.

So we'll just go for another 30 seconds, just breathing slightly softer, slightly slower than normal. Listen to your body for feedback, if you feel more saliva in your mouth, If you feel calmer or warmer, these are all really good signs if you have more mental clarity. But if it feels really stressful, if it feels really tense, then just relaxing the body, maybe taking a break.

Okay then, let's take a break. So how was that? What was that like?

It feels strange, doesn't it? Breathing less air, feeling like you don't have quite enough air, but maybe you notice some of the positive benefits as well. Now normally we do sets of Buteyko breathing where we'll do four rounds of four minutes with little breaks in between.

So if you like you could even rewind four minutes, I'll put a time code on the screen to the start of the exercise and just try that again and keep practicing. Feel free to drop me questions or comments in the comment section below. I'll also put some links up on the screen to some other guided breathe light exercises.

If you found the one that we did today too strong there's a gentler version here or there's a similar version to what we did here. Thank you so much for listening, please hit the like button and subscribe to spread the word about Buteyko breathing. If you need any help with your breathing I offer one to ones and courses, check out the website in the description.

Thank you so much for listening and I wish you all the best.