Take A Breath Health and Lifestyle Show

A recent radio interview on ABC National radio with Joel Spry,  a former client, now good friend of mine with whom, we used a combination of MIckel Therapy and Breath work to overcome IBS, anxiety and CFS. We discussed breath coaching and many things breathing related – that most of us don’t breathe correctly; we over-breathe. The consequences over over-breathing, including lack of energy, apnoea episodes, and constriction of our breathing tubes as we see in asthma and breathing difficulties; or constriction in other tubes in our body, as seen in IBS, reflux and constipation, which are so often worse when we’re stressed and we breathe more rapidly.     We also discussed the affect of slouching whilst we’re sitting on our breathing, why we over-breathe in the first place, and what we can do now to correct this. Finally, we finished with a simple diaphragmatic, nose breathing exercise.  See  www.takeabreath.com.au or www.timaltman.com.au for more details.  

In this episode of Take A Breath, we interview world renowned yoga teacher and physiotherapist, Simon Borg-Olivier. Simon’s accomplishments in his field include teaching yoga for over 30 years, founding Yoga Synergy in Sydney, authoring the book ‘Applied Anatomy and Physiology of Yoga’, and he now trains yoga teachers all over the world. 

In this episode we discuss: 

Simon’s introduction to free diving as a 6 year old, and pranayama breathing techniques not long afterwards. 

How Simon’s training as both a scientist & physiotherapist, and yoga practitioner allowed him to merge the scientific paradigm with yoga. 

The clash between the ‘core training’ approach to posture and stability held by the physiotherapy and fitness professions for many years with the understanding of the importance of free movement of the diaphragm for correct breathing. 

Simon’s belief that the first thing that should be taught to students for their long term well-being is the restoration of natural breathing as most people’s breathing is so inefficient that, if they are given specific breathing techniques, they will tend to over-breathe and over-tense.  

And that natural breathing is most effectively learned by combining it with moving the body, especially the trunk in certain ways that improves breathing in many ways. 

What is over-breathing. 

How Simon teaches breathing to students – including restoration of natural breathing, as well as other specific pranayama techniques.  

Simon’s 5 features of natural breathing:  

Inhalation is felt very low. 

Exhalation is passive. 

Breathing is minimal – no more than you need. 

It can run on automatic. 

Through the nose. 

 

Simon’s views on the Wim Hof method, including the strengths and limitations. 

An incredible experience Simon shared where he was recorded in a laboratory doing hyperventilation breathing techniques (similar to the Wim Hof techniques, but more complex) followed by a 6 minute breath hold, then a spontaneous 8 minute breath hold immediately afterwards.  

Techniques for learning to increase breath hold time – including connecting with the 12 areas of the body that allow dual control between the conscious and sub-conscious – the ‘12 bridges’. 

Why Simon believes that most modern yoga is no longer yoga – it involves over stretching, over-tensing, over-breathing, and over-thinking, and therefore blocks the natural movement of energy and information through the body. It is more like a work-out. 

More information on Simon, and his yoga teaching can be found at www.yogasynergy.com, and the Yoga Synergy Youtube channel. 

Also, more information on Simon, and courses on breathing (including plenty of free information) can be found on www.simonborgolivier.com 

 

The Use of Breath Training For Sporting & Surfing Performance 

In this second part of our interview with Andy Van Bergen from Cyling Tips,  www.cyclingtips.com, we discuss the use, mechanisms and benefits of breath training for sporting performance. 

Including a discussion of: 

The Trek professional cycling team (a major team on the World Tour who compete in events such as the Tour de France and Giro D’Italia) employing a free diving coach to work with their cyclists to enhance performance. 

The Wim Hof method for performance – often free divers attend his courses, and he trains groups for challenges such as climbing Mt Kilimanjaro where they are exposed to the challenge of both high altitude and low pressure. 

Dr Mark Cohen of MIT University in Melbourne, Australia believes that the difference of training at altitude compared to sea level stresses the body and forces it to adapt in positive ways for performance. This stress that leads to positive change is called hormetic stress. 

Similarly, with the Wim Hof breathing techniques, the stress on the body via the breathing exercises, stimulates the body to make positive adaptations for health and performance. 

There are 2 phases to the mechanism of the Wim Hof Method: 

Phase 1 – the initial hyperventilation exercises where the body is stressed by being exposed to extremely low levels of carbon dioxide, CO2, and the blood stream is super saturated with oxygen, O2. This is where the participant feels light headed. 

Phase 2 – the breath hold phase where CO2 levels increase dramatically forcing oxygen from the blood stream into the cells for energy production, and increasing the parasympathetic aspect of the nervous system leading to deep relaxation. This is where the participant feels very good – both relaxed and energised. 

Noted that Wim Hof is actually a very experienced and accomplished yoga practitioner, and his technique is a simpler version of a more complex yoga breathing technique. This makes it more accessible to the general public. 

The mechanism and benefits of free diving training, including: 

Training the body to adapt to elevated levels of CO2 using breath hold techniques. The respiratory centre in the hypothalamus, in the brain stem, adapts to the elevated CO2 and begins to accept higher CO2 as normal. 

Strengthening the diaphragm using various diaphragmatic breathing exercises and rhythms so that the body is comfortable breathing at all levels of exercise (and duress) using the diaphragm as the primary muscle to drive breathing. 

Increased lung surface area used for gas exchange via diaphragm breathing. 

The adaptation to higher CO2 and strengthening of the diaphragm will allow the body to breathe at lower breathing rates and volume at specific exercise levels, making oxygen delivery to cells for energy production far more efficient. 

This will then delay lactic acid onset. 

Via the influence on the autonomic nervous system (via the vagus nerve) on both breathing (via the diaphragm) and the heart, reducing breathing rate will lead to a reduction in heart rate at the same level of exercise. 

Again via the dual influence of the autonomic nervous system on breathing (via the diaphragm) and the stress response, our body will be more relaxed at specific levels of exercise – as a result of increased parasympathetic enervation. 

And have greater access to alpha or ‘zone’ states when exercising. 

Overall, breath training will make the body far more efficient, and relaxed when exercising. 

We discussed the use and benefits of breath hold techniques for surfers. 

Take A Breath run courses for both surfers and sports people,

An ‘Everesting’ Attempt at Mount Everest 

In this episode we interview Andy Van Bergen on www.cyclingtips.com, Australia’s largest cycling media outlet and up there with the biggest in the world of this type. 

Andy did some breathing work recently with Tim Altman from Take A Breath in preparation for a unique, and mountainous cycling adventure at Everest Base Camp.  

In this episode we discuss: 

Andy’s background into cycling and eventually Cycling Tips, which was his favourite website. 

How the Everest adventure evolved as a part of the series of cycling adventures run by Cycling Tips, called ‘Road Tripping’, which features cycling adventures in little known destinations around the world. 

The concept of ‘Everesting’ invented by Andy 3-4 years ago which has now had over 2,500 participants from over 70n countries world-wide complete the challenge. 

Everesting involves riding up and down any hill, of any gradient, anywhere in the physical or virtual world, until you climb the equivalent height of Mt Everest at 8848m, in 1 ride. 

As the road to Everest Base Camp has recently been paved (on the Tibetan side), Andy and his team took the opportunity to make an Everesting attempt at Mt Everest – at base camp which is at an altitude of 5,500m. An audacious and thrilling challenge. 

Their overall preparation for this challenge. 

Part of the preparation for Andy and his team was to train at Melbourne Altitude Training Centre in a room set to similar altitude as Everest Base Camp, which is where he met Tim who had made contact with the centre in order to complement the work athletes were doing there – the theory being that whilst altitude training makes a person more efficient at taking up oxygen into their bloodstream (as there’s less oxygen at altitude), learning to breath more efficiently will increase the body’s ability to get this increased saturation of oxygen from the bloodstream to the cells for energy production. A great synergy. 

Unfortunately, whilst their cycling preparation was a 6 month build up, Tim and Andy only started working together 2 weeks prior to them leaving for Everest. This would not allow enough time to make significant changes to the team’s respiratory system to significantly  increase overall respiratory efficiency and performance – this takes months. 

However we still had enough time to focus on breathing techniques and rhythms to achieve the following outcomes: 

1. Increasing relaxation on and off the bike – but especially under duress (from altitude, difficulty breathing, fatigue, cold etc.) via the influence of the diaphragm on the autonomic nervous system. 

2. Deceasing recovery time after each ascent – or the time it takes for the heart rate to get back to base levels – again via the influence of the diaphragm on the autonomic nervous system (reducing the time it takes for the heart rate to return to base or resting levels), and by temporarily improving respiratory efficiency (oxygen uptake by the cells). 

Andy found that the biggest card they had up their sleeve on the challenge was using the breathing exercises. They relied on these techniques several times per day, and used them to relax and slow the breathing in the following specific ways (based on the principles above): 

1. When measuring oxygen saturations (which fell to dangerously low levels, especially for Andy who discovered he is predisposed to altitude sickness), they would see a spike on oxygen saturation levels within 5 minutes. 

2. To relax as anxiety levels increased due to difficulties in breathing at altitude – both when cycling and travelling on the bus. 

3. Nose and diaphragm breathing on each cycling descent to reduce heart rate and increase oxygen saturation levels. 

Special guest Scott Townsend of NZ. 

Scott attended the Wim Hoff instructor’s training course with Take a Breath co-host, Matt Radford. 

Scott founded the social safety message “Stop, Drop and Breathe” – based on the safety principal during an earthquake of jump under the door or table. It is a not for profit organisation based on this social safety message. 

Being from NZ, Scott has experienced earthquakes.  

Matt: Tell us about your social safety message? 

Scott: To answer, I’ll ask Tim a quick question, ‘What were you taught to do if you catch on fire?’ What 3 words do you do? 

Tim: Jump on the ground and roll around. 

Scott: Yes, “Stop, Drop and Roll”. Most English people are taught this if you catch on fire. Most people don’t catch on fire however. But we are taught this from a young age so it resonates at an instinctive level.  

My thing is if there’s an inside fire. You know, strong emotions, too many thoughts, not enough here in the now, kind of struggling with the human experience. This inside fire. The feeling in our head, gut and stomach – you just feel it. 

Matt: I see my 9 yr old son, you can see that anger getting worked up inside. You can see that fire, and sometimes he knows how to settle himself and sometimes he doesn’t. So that’s that inner fire that you’re talking about. 

Tim: Emotions going wild. 

Scott: I just lump it all together – the emotions, the thoughts, but there’s also the good in the fire when we want to focus or are in the zone. So my thing is that when people catch on fire inside, ‘Stop, Drop and Breathe’.  

Stop what you are doing 

Drop into the moment. Drop into your body. 

And breathe. 

Matt: Stop, Drop and Breathe. 

Scott: The stop is, stop what you are doing. Just take a second to stop.  

Drop into this moment, what’s happening right now. Not in 5 seconds, 5 minutes, 5 years or 10 years ago. Just look around and acknowledge the here and now. 

Drop into the body and get the mind out of the mind. Get into the body. Just drop all of your baggage and take a big breath in. And just let it go. 

That’s really my work at the core. Those 3 words. And then it builds up into all kinds of things from there, but it’s really trying to open the door to breath awareness for people that may have never thought of it before. Because we say words like meditation and mindfulness, but for a lot of people, they think it’s not for them. And that’s b/c they don’t have the language or experience inside of them to take big words like these, or Wim Hoff method, and make sense of them. So they just discard it. Whereas what is good about ‘Stop, Drop and Breathe’ is that it used language that’s already within people. That’s instinctive; i.e. just stop, drop and roll.  So it’s using language that they’re already comfortable with and it opens that door to breath awareness. Once they start thinking about it, cool. And then, if they want to follow this weird, dimly lit path we’ve created, they can do that. It’s really just about when people are losing their shit, take a couple of breaths, take some space, giving you the option to respond to life rather than react. 

Stop, Drop and Breathe. 

So my thing is that you can always take 5 seconds to stop what you’re doing, drop into the moment, and take a breath. Just whenever you remember. Let’s do that now. Big breath in through the nose, bring it to the belly, and just gently let it go out of the nose or mouth. So there’s lots of times throughout the day where you can just stop what you’re doing, drop into the moment, and breathe. Because a lot of the time we’re just in auto-pilot doing things. And the breath is usually on auto-pilot too – breathing 23,000 times in the day or something like that. 

Tim: 25-30,000 times. Sorry, the nerd kicks in. 

Scott: No, good. If you ask my ex-wife I’m frequently wrong. If I can be right half the time,

In our first interview we catch up with world renowned mindfulness researcher and advocate, Dr Craig Hassed, associate professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and author of 13 books thus far on mindfulness and mind-body medicine – or psychoneuroimmunology. 

We start the interview with a fantastic, shot mindfulness exercise guided by Dr Hassed. 

In the interview you will learn: 

How a moment of awareness resulting from pre-competition nerves led Dr Hassed to a professional life studying mindfulness and mind-body medicine. 

How the Richmond Tigers Australian Rules Football Team incorporated mindfulness into their training and preparation to win the 2017 Australian Football League Premiership, with stars such as Dustin Martin leading the way. 

A brilliant mindfulness exercise for expending the minimum possible amount of energy whilst effectively going about work and day to day tasks that is fantastic for combatting fatigue and stress. 

Some extremely useful tips on how to maintain a long term, consistent mindfulness practice. 

Some of the significant findings from research on mindfulness as to effectiveness in preventing and treating mental and physical ailments, including: 

Mindfulness benefits for mental health – especially in treating and preventing relapses of depression. 

It stimulates brain function and growth of new brain cells, so it shows benefits for memory, executive function, improved cognitive function, decision making and managing stress. 

Improved pain management, and with cancer and MS. 

Epigenetic effects, meaning that mindfulness changes cellular DNA – I switches off inflammatory genes, and switches on healthy immune genes, slows down ageing etc. 

Increased performance and learning for kids in schools. 

Increased empathy, compassion, leadership, and emotional intelligence. 

New research on mindfulness that has started to indicate that mindfulness can not only prevent Alzheimer’s Disease, but also reverse existing damage of Alzheimer’s – thus indicating that mindfulness plays a role in altering neuroplasticity of the brain. 

A discussion on some of the books Dr Hassed has authored including, “New Frontiers in Medicine”, “The Freedom Trap” and “Mindfulness For Life” 

Dr Hassed’s desire that we not only all wake up individually, but also collectively to make the world a better place. 

We hope you enjoyed this episode and get as much or more out of it as we did.  

 

In this, the second of our tech talks following “Take a Trip With Oxygen” we learn that, rather than being a gas with a bad PR problem (a waste gas that harms the ozone layer and contributes to global warming), carbon dioxide, CO2 plays a vital role in respiration, and therefore energy production – as the ‘limiting factor’ in respiration. 

In this episode you will learn that: 

Whilst getting oxygen, O2, to our cells is vital for energy production and survival, without CO2 in our system we would never get the oxygen to the cells in the first place. 

The role CO2 plays in ‘The Bohr Effect’ that describes biochemically how oxygen gets from the air we inhale into our lungs, through our bloodstream via our heart and then arterial blood supply, and ultimately to our cells for energy production. CO2 is the central player in this process. 

We only use one quarter of the oxygen we inhale at rest – the rest is exhaled. 

There is only 0.03% of CO2 in atmospheric air so we must store CO2 in our blood stream, and our lungs at the end of exhalation (known as end tidal CO2).  

When we breathe as we should (according to medical diagnostic norms) this whole delicate balance of The Bohr Effect works beautifully and we produce plenty of energy, and we thrive. This involves, breathing: 

Through our nose rather than our mouth. 

Using our diaphragm 

Silently 

Gentle wave pattern 

8-10 breaths per minute 

The question we ask is this: Do you breathe this way – as you should??   

This will be the discussion of our next tech talk!! 

Take a Trip With Oxygen 

Welcome to our first episode of “Take A Breath” – www.takeabreath.com.au, with Matt Radford (physiotherapist, Chinese medicine practitioner and Wim Hof Method instructor) and Tim Altman (naturopath/nutritionist, Buteyko breathing practitioner and breath coach, and Mickel Therapist). 

Take A Breath is a podcast offering breathing techniques and health and lifestyle tips for those wanting more balance in this high paced, crazy world, and those wanting to get more out of life. 

Our mission is to help people live happy, healthy and balanced lives by: 

Educating 

Enabling 

Enlightening 

Via our podcasts, books, online courses, videos, blog, and community newsletters. 

In this first episode, the first of what we call our ‘tech talks’ we introduce you to the fundamentals of breathing (biologically and physiologically) where we take you on a trip with an oxygen molecule from the air that we breathe, through our nose and respiratory system, right down to the trillions of cells in our body in which oxygen plays a vital role in energy production. 

An understanding of how breathing works is vital in learning how potent a modality for health, optimal living and performance, correct breathing is. Yet, ironically, most of us take our breathing  completely for granted, whilst breathing well below what are considered medically as functional norms, and most definitely way below what is ideal breathing function. 

We have both seen this potential clinically and personally and we have decided we want to share it with as many people as we can. Along our journeys we have also seen the huge role lifestyle balance plays in health and well-being, so we will share many other health and lifestyle tips with you as we go.