Discover Relief from
Obstructive Breathing
Our environment and personal habits impact our health and well being.
We take breathing for granted. Discover how much better you feel when you take control of your breathing.
Regain control of your life in four sessions. Using natural techniques, alleviate symptoms of dysfunctional breathing.
Get your breathing right and you will accelerate your healing.
Back to Basics
It is those things that we take for granted that can be the most important to restoring health.
How often do you pay attention to your breath? And when you do, what do you realise?
It is one of the most simple, automatic reflexes, one that we don’t normally give a thought to. Yet, if we can take control of it, we can learn to control more of what is happening in and around us.
“This is magic, but not a magic pill…”
Magic – because it is the invisible force inside of you, but not a magic pill because there are no shortcut solutions.
Eat good. Feel better.
Nutrition is an important factor to have a stable lifestyle.
It used to be people say that ‘you are what you eat’ and there is a lot of truth to that. However, to be more specific we can adjust the statement to be:
“You are what you absorb”
A full selection of the right nutrients is essential for the body to function properly. This will allow the reduction in energy needed to expend on digestion and in turn enable a calmer breathing pattern.
Getting assessments and directions from a competent nutritionist can reap huge benefits to your eating habits and ultimately physical well being.
A Time That Matters
It is not just the length of time that you are resting that makes a difference, but also the quality of it.
Sleep science is a relatively new phenomena. And it appears that there are not enough conclusive studies to understand the full gamut of elements that make it up.
“We have literally no idea about the optimal for long-term health sleep duration.“
What we do know is that being able to feel refreshed on waking up from sleep certainly puts us in a more attuned state of being. Using breathwork techniques we can get you there more often.
More than a State of Mind
There is a rise is awareness of this issue from all sectors of life.
“Mindfulness is often ineffective to those who need it most…”
So how is breathwork different? The advantages of focusing attention on the breath is that you are actively participating in the activity. This is whilst the blood carrying the oxygen can flow more freely to your brain. The release of oxygen into the brain has the positive effects to balance the state of mind and being.
It is important to note a distinction between mental health and mental illness (but that is for another debate).
Unlimited Options
Our environment plays an important role in our health and well being. Whether we admit it or not...
Is it nature or nurture?
There are valid arguments on both sides as to what elements we should look out for to protect and encourage. Perhaps we need to recognise that there is a role that our environment plays in the make up of the body’s well being. This can come from visible and the invisible spectrum around us. They affect the body in different ways, and as such also take different lengths of time to cause a noticeable impact.
Returning to the breath will assist to ground the body in scenarios that you would expect as well as those that you may not expect it to.
A Paradigm Shift
The Buteyko Method is based on three empirical scientific theories that have been known for over 100 years. (More on that later for those who are interested.)
“Do you know how to breathe deeply?”
“Is deep breathing good for you?”
Some would say these are simple, innocuous questions. Everyone knows the answer, right? It is accepted that it surely deep breathing, filling the lungs with air as you inhale and exhale is good for you. We only need to understand what and how to practice this so that we feel better.
The number of breaths per minute for normal breathing rates is approximately 12 breaths per minute. Each breath contains about 500ml of air. This equates to 6 litres of air per minute that a person would inhale. It has been observed that people suffering from dis-ease breathe a volume greater than this regular amount. And they do so chronically – meaning over a long time frame. As such this habit feeds into a loop of sensitizing the brain to this breath rate, leading to more prolonged
hyper-ventilation.
*hyper – too much
*ventilation – breathing
So, you may ask, ‘how do I know if you fall into that category?’ – as someone who breathes too much. Typical symptoms include: mouth breathing, audible breathing, frequent sighing, holding of the breath (apnoea), upper chest breathing, heavy breathing…
They may appear to be unrelated to breathing, for example cold hands and cold feet, or feeling ‘spaced out’. Yet they are commonly associated with dysfunctional breathing. But the good news is that getting this rectified will clear up the symptoms.
Where is gets interesting...
If you have strapped a pulse oximeter onto your finger you will notice that the percentage of saturated oxygen in the blood is generally between 97-99%. Essentially that means that there is plenty of oxygen in the body. So, does it help us to breath a greater volume, or condensed O2 into the lungs?
The atmosphere around us is made up of 21% oxygen and only 0.03% carbon dioxide (CO2). Yet the human cells require 2% oxygen and 6.5% carbon dioxide to function properly. The metabolic process produces CO2 as an end product, which is exactly what we want for our cells, however we need to be careful not to exhale this out. For if we do, the levels of CO2 in the body will drop. Especially if a person has been doing so habitually over a long time period.
The Verigo-Bohr Effect (1904) explains that the hemoglobin (oxygen carrying red blood cells) will not willingly release the oxygen if there is little carbonic acid (CO2) in the blood. In other words, the greater the percentage of CO2 in the blood the more freely the red blood cells will release the oxygen that they are carrying, to the tissues where they are needed.
The Genius of Dr Buteyko
Dr Buteyko researched the phenomena to create the Volitional Elimination of Deep Breathing. Better known now as the Buteyko Method. In essence, these are exercises for the patient to control their breath so as to increase the level of CO2 in the body. To get the brain used to this increased level, i.e. a decrease in the sensitivity of the build up of CO2, and subsequently to allow for the release of oxygen from the red blood cells to the tissues.
Test Yourself! The Control Pause
You have got this far! So time to try it out on yourself to see where your body is holding. Please remember that there is no right and wrong answer. We are using this as a measure to work with in understanding the condition of the body.
- Sit relaxed on a chair
- Make sure your back is away from the back of the seat
- Keep your back straight (imagine there is a string pulling up from the top of your head, lifting the back to its upright position)
- Make sure you are relaxed!
- Breath through your nose, keep your mouth closed
- Allow yourself to relax
- When you are ready, gently inhale, then exhale, and after the exhale pinch the nose closed and hold the breath
- At the first definitive signs that you want to take a breath (a hunger for air) release and resume gentle breathing [Important note: if on resuming breathing you have a gasp for air, you have held your breath for too long]
- Record the time
The Control Pause is a wonderful measurement of levels of CO2 in the body – and your health.
Patrick McKeown is a world renowned expert on breathing. He trained directly under Dr Buteyko and has now published books on the importance of functional breathing.
