Curious about your breath…

A 'functional breather' is someone who; is breathing through their nose (day and night). The diaphragm is engaged and if you look closely, you'll see the lower ribs expanding. Breathing is soft, light, smooth and so slow that you barely notice or hear the breath.

Nasal breathing helps us to slow the breath down, and controls the amount of CO2 we release on the exhale (noting we need to retain a certain amount for the Oxygen to off load). It also warms and cleans the air before we take it to the lungs. And we’ll more naturally engage the diaphragm when nasal breathing, allowing the breath to travel deep into the tiny air sacs of the lungs where gas exchange takes place.

A ‘Dysfunctional breather’ mostly breathes through their mouth, bringing cool, unfiltered air into the lungs. The breathing is shallow, sitting in the upper chest. Its fast, noisy and irregular; exhaling too much CO2 and in turn limiting Oxygen delivery.

Yes, the only time we should be opening the mouth is to eat, to talk and in intense exercise. Training and even walking should be attempted to breath nasal to help delay fatigue and lactic acid. Mouth breathers should also note that the cold air they breathe in results in airways and blood vessels becoming constricted, the body has to work harder therefore wastes unnecessary energy doing the job that the nose does without even trying!

We need a certain amount of CO2 in the body in order for Oxygen to offload from the haemoglobin to then feed the cells, tissues and organs, including the brain. This wonderful gas is also the main driver that instructs us to take our next breath, so if someone has a lower tolerance to CO2, they'll be breathing faster and harder.

Definitely not, we are already complete with 95-99% of Oxygen so we don’t need to be breathing bigger breaths to ‘oxygenate more’, in fact we need to do the opposite. What we need is more CO2 as this helps the Oxygen already saturating the haemoglobin to off load. ‘Deep’ simply means to breathe 'deep' and low into the tiny air sacs of the lungs where gas exchange (or the magic as I like to say) takes place.

Definitely, most health issues that I work with commonly have majority of the dysfunctional breathing patterns. The person snoring is taking in too much air for the size of the airways - it’s likely they also breathe too hard in the day and take this habit to the bedroom. The person dealing with heightened stress, anxiety and insomnia are all likely breathing also too hard and fast, sending the brain messages that they’re not safe, or simply can’t switch off the mind chatter as they breathing pattern is keeping them in a constant state of heightened arousal.

I work with you to correct your breathing across day and night. I work on the theory that if you're breathing in a more controlled manner during the day, you’ll breath better in your sleep, sending you into a deeper rest, and in turn you’ll wake up more alert. You’ll literally learn how to send more Oxygen around the body, open up airways and blood vessel. All of which are scientifically proven to reduce snoring, asthma symptoms, apnoea’s and anxiety.

The short answer is yes, often someone living in their head or a constant state of anxiety will have an unfortunate cycle of the anxiety causing bad breathing habits such as hard and fast breathing and the bad breathing habits causing feelings of anxiety and often a state of suffocation. If we can improve everyday breathing patterns and learn tools from our inner tool box that help switch on the Rest and Digest state of the nervous system (the Parasympathetic state) when anxious and stressful situations arise, we can learn to be more in control.