December 09, 2023

Bite Sized * Breathing 101 - Inspire before you expire

13 minutes

This week, following a request from regular listener David Hill, I’m going to take a short dive into what is called breath work. So thank you David for a great suggestion! I’ve had several podcast conversation about this specific subject and there's no doubt in my mind that it makes a real difference to health and performance by managing anxiety, improving that ability to relax, and all of the positive knock ons from there.

Breathing is controlled by our autonomic nervous system (ANS), so for the majority of your day it happens unconsciously. And, you’re probably thinking, "Well, I’ve got to 30, 40, 50 without ever having to really think about this so I must be doing something right." Yes, you are doing enough to keep your body alive and running.

In fact, with some conscious breathing you can make some really positive changes to your mind and your body, helping you to be more relaxed or more activated.

I’m going to divide this into 3 categories and provide an example of each that you can try:

Purposeful breathing to maintain ease

Breathing to improve exercise technique and recovery

Calm down breathing to lower anxiety and physiological anxiety

I’m going to finish the episode with a couple of little experiments you can try to see how different types of breathing affect your heart rate.

To revisit (or listen for the first time) to the longer podcasts about breathing please click on the links below.

How to improve your health and athletic performance with nose breathing - George Dallam

How you can gain the Oxygen Advantage to supercharge your health and fitness - Patrick McKeown

How to be an UnBreakable Runner - Brian MacKenzie

If you are still breathing you are still winning - Louisa Holmes

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By Simon Ward

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