Welcome to Mindset, mood and Movement, a systemic approach to human behavior, performance, and wellbeing. How psychological, emotional, and physical health are all connected. In this episode, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience to help you overcome a challenge that you might be facing in life health. All work. What is breathwork and why does it help with stress and anxiety? Simply put, the conscious manipulation of breathing. Can help affect a change in our body, in our mind and in our state. So it's a very fundamental skill. It's a very human skill. It's a physiological skill and it's one that is, of course, starting to become more and more, uh, aware in, in today's world. And it's fascinating. So you may have some knowledge on this and you may know nothing. So I'm going to take this from the basics out. To give you a little bit of background, my introduction to conscious breathing started many years ago when I did yoga practice. And for those of us who've done a yoga class, you'll be guided by the teacher about always paying attention to the breath. There's a certain cadence to the breath. And I, I just thought, well, that's what we do here. It was in that practice that I started to learn that I was changing how I felt and that I could use this type of yoga breathing as it were at the time to help me feel different. to help me relax, to help me clear my mind. And I've done yoga for many, many years. And in the more recent years, I've got interested in the scientific side of it. I trained with Patrick McKeown at the Oxygen Advantage, and he's a real proponent in the field. And there's many other people. Wim Hof, of course, is a famous person that people know. There's Brian McKenzie in America. There's people doing some good stuff around this and adding lots of layers of science, sport. And how the whole mind body system works. But today I wanted to give you a little intro and to talk about one particular nuance, which is about dealing with stress and maybe anxiety as well. It's a big one. It, you know, it seems to be ubiquitous in our culture. There are so many pressures. There are so many things we have to do. And to feel stressed or anxious. And we can perhaps interchange those terms is, it's not a nice thing. And actually it's deeply unhealthy and often Unnecessary. How we use the breath can be one of the key things to learn that you can do to control or let's say mediate your state. So let's, let's give you a little bit of context. Breath work is often thought of as downregulation, so to relax, and that's true, we can downregulate, which is what we're going to talk about today, but you can go the other way, you can go upregulation, so if you're feeling sleepy and heavy, you can change the breath pattern to lift your energy, the steady state breathing, to keep you in a flow state, absolute focus, which I love that, particularly steady state breathing, in the waking day. And then I would say there is breath pattern, an understanding that it connects you to your body. It connects to movement, and it connects to exercise. So if you're doing something like heavy weight training, running, long distance zone two, all the different forms of exercise, the breath is always happening and it can be a big part of that. So it's a big field. Let's zone in on stress. Let's zone in anxiety. And let's talk about what we can do with this. So the first thing is, is to understand the distinction between nasal and mouth breathing. Now, um, if you're listening now, I wonder how are you breathing? Are you mouth breathing? Are you nose breathing? Do you even know? And this is a big one that I got caught up in. In the yoga practice, it's a lot about nasal breathing. And of course, if you do a lot of classes, you get disciplined in it. But why it matters is, is fairly a recent understanding in a scientific context that when we breathe through our nose, we release, nitric oxide, it's called, and it's a little gas which permeates, it comes out the sinus area, it goes into the breath, it goes into the lungs, and It, it goes down into the lungs and helps open everything up. It's called a vasodilator, which opens the veins. It's a bronchial dilator. So it opens up the, the bronchioli and the lungs. And essentially it's, it's also got, and essentially it's also got a, an antibacterial and antimicrobial function to it. So nitric oxide has been often cited as the miracle gas that's only been found in more recent times. If we nasal breathe, this gas is distributed in the sinus area and it goes down into the lungs. We get all of the benefits, whether you are looking to down regulate or looking to be a more performing athlete. Mouth breathing does not distribute this because it's distributing the sinus. So the first thing is, is to know that the nasal breath is fundamental for, this is one reason. Secondly, nasal breath is easier to control. We can mouth breathe. Deep and quick. And the problem with that is we can go into a big gulp of air and there's a tendency to mouth breathe and upper chest breathe. Why this matters is because if your upper chest breathing from via Biomechanical point of view, you are only using the upper parts of the lungs, which are less, able to, do osmosis and exchange the oxygen into the bloodstream, which is the lower part. But if you're chest breathing, that's predominantly a sympathetic nervous system response, i. e. it's a stress response. If you gulp in a load of air through your mouth and breathe into your chest now, it pumps you up. Now there's a place for that. But if you are already stressed, if you're already feeling quite anxious about the things that's going on for you, we do not want to be mouth and chest breathing. It's, it's like adding petrol to a fire whilst trying to put it out. It's just going to make it worse. And yeah, if you nasal breathe, it's normally easier because of the connections to get into the lower belly, what we call a diaphragmatic breath. So. Biomechanics of this. If you are nose breathing, there's better control, there's nitric oxide, and we are more, it's easier to access the diaphragm to breathe. And if you're mouth breathing, there's more chance, you don't get the nitric oxide, you're likely to get chest breathing, and the pace of the breath is fast. Okay, so let's talk about, let's talk about the frequency and resonance. A lot of breaths are taken in a day. It's something like 20, 000 breaths a day a person will take. So it's huge. And we can't go very long without the breath. You know, we can live without food for weeks. We can live without water for days. Most people can't live without air for probably more than about 15, 20 seconds. It's, it's so fundamental. We are breathing all the time, but this nature of breath is also influencing the nervous system, as I've already spoken about the sympathetic. I'm parasympathetic. So that's the activated response. And then the more down regulated response, how we breathe affects this massively. So let's add in another layer. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to summarize this as well. Cause I recognize there's a lot of information coming across here. The diaphragm is this big donut shape muscle sort of, uh, roughly abdominal area, belly area. So when you take a belly breath, You might try it now. So breathing. Ah, I can feel my abdominal area sort of push out a little bit. the reason for that is the diaphragm presses the abdominal contents down. And of course that, that makes the belly stick out a little. Now we don't want to get caught up in like I've got a big belly and, and you know, all the worry of what people think about. Understand that that belly breath is a healthy breath. That's the diaphragm, the big breathing muscle working well. So if we can tie this together, nasal breath, diaphragm breath. Now we're starting to have got the mechanics in place. Let's understand the, uh, the frequency and cadence. So I, I did a little play a minute ago with, the fast mouth breath and how that was all going. Let's try one together. So I'm going to invite you to breathe in through your nose to your lower belly, and then breathe out from the belly to the nose. Let's do that one more time. Breathing through the nose to the belly. And breathe out from the belly to the nose. Now, even in those couple of breaths, I already feel calmer. And what's happening here is this frequency, that, that the length of the breath is also dictating what's happening in our nervous system and our body. And then all the related signals that go to the brain. If the breath is slower, essentially what we've got going on is information running up from the diaphragm area and it runs up through what is called the vagus nerve. And these fibers have most of their fibers going to the brain. So the information comes from the diaphragm that says whether your internal system feels safe, whether your internal system feels anxious or worried, and the pace of the breath is a big... Influencer on this. There's a lot of, work done now on the vagus nerve. It's, it's a big subject. I'll talk about it on another episode, but just know this, bad information is running up this major pathway to the brain and the brain is taking that, that information as like, okay, how, how are we doing? Are we safe? Is the body? environment, feeling safe or not, which then influences areas like the limbic brain, the emotional brain. It can fire the amygdala, which you may have heard of. It's the fight flight area. And before we know it, if we are not conscious of the breath, this experience in the body is telling our brain how we are. And yet if we consciously breathe, the experience is also telling the brain how we are, but we're choosing that. So this becomes one of the Most powerful tools to deal with stress and anxiety because you can't out think it sometimes. you can try and rationalize, right? We all do that. We try and rationalize. Oh, you know, don't worry about the problem or don't worry what he said to me or don't worry about that. And yet we're worried. We're worried about, Oh God, breath and physiology. Directly affects brain and psychology. So it is the first place to go to if you are feeling stressed and want to change that. If you're feeling anxious and want to change that. So let's get a little, little, uh, a little more nuanced about this now. So I've covered the nose and mouth. I've spoken about the chest and diaphragm. I've spoken about the nervous system in very basic terms. When we bring it together, we can then understand that breath work. And this particular version of it, the downregulation, is a sweet spot. We can change the nervous system's conversation up to the brain. That changes the biochemistry, all the hormones. Adrenaline, cortisone, acetylcholine, all these things that affect every organ, and everything about how we feel. So how we breathe... is how we are and I love breath work because it's something I work with in psychology and coaching. It's something I work with in the movement side and performance. How we breathe is something we can get hold of and we may not know, but the breath is under both conscious control, which is what we're doing now. We're consciously playing with it and trying it right and it's under autonomic control. So whilst we're asleep, the body and the brain, they have this conversation, your body will breathe without you having to think. So it becomes the gateway, if you will, into the nervous system, into the body and into those deep, what most people can't change those deep experiences of stress or relaxation. So to summarize, if you want to learn about breathwork, you're going to learn a lot about how to control your state, which in many ways state is everything. How you feel predicates almost everything you do. To summarize, I'm going to invite you to play with this going forward. Go to nasal breathing rather than mouth breathing. Some people talk about, is it okay to breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth? Yes, there are other pieces around this, but to keep it simple, breathe in through your nose. Next, breathe in through your nose to your lower belly. So hook those two together. Thirdly, start to notice the pace of the breath. And if you slow your breath down, particularly the out breath, those signals go up. So you can imagine that if you breathe out slowly, there's an information wave going up into the brain that says, I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm good. I'm in control. That is a powerful thing to do because most of us, we need that. And if we don't know how to breathe well, we won't be able to access it. So, nasal breathing, abdominal or belly breathing, slow the pace, particularly the out breath. The simplest model I can share with you is that. If you use that alone, you will change your stress response massively. But the trick is this. You have to remember. You have to remember to use it, you have to choose to apply it, and this is why we practice. Practice makes permanent. So, if you don't pay attention to it, you'll never know. If you pay attention to it, you will know and you'll be able to deploy it on a regular basis. Um, that is a short summary on, of course, there's a lot of technical science around breathing and breathing mechanics and, and all this stuff. and I'm gonna spend, more in, following episodes around sport performance, all these other elements. But I get it asked so many times. I'm stressed, I'm anxious, I want to do something about it. And I always say, let me teach you this simple breath pattern and why it works. It is fundamental. And as with many things in life, the fundamentals are the most important pieces to get into play before we work on the particulars of nuance. So I hope you take a breath in with me now through your nose to the belly, a slow breath out, a breath with the nose into the lower belly and a slow breath out. And I hope you can take that breath pattern with you and down regulate when you need to reduce the stress, reduce anxiety, and know that you can get some semblance of control over this. when you need to by using the breath. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself, then you can go to my website, which is sal jeffries.com, spelled S A L J E F E R I E s sal jeffries.com. Hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message. If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching could help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.