The First Step

Stepping onto the surface of the moon, Neil Armstrong famously took one small step for mankind. When it comes to our health and optimal performance there is one, very important – simple – first step that most people are overlooking.

Imagine the following situations…

You are about to enter an important meeting that is going to make or break a significant project you have been working on for months.

It’s 2am and you have been lying awake for hours, tossing and turning.

You are an elite athlete about to take a game winning point, your next move is crucial.

Mastering this simple technique will bring calmness, optimal performance and health (and help you get to sleep).

It’s called breathing.

Sure, you do it every day but how much thought have you really ever given to it. Unless you are a singer, dancer or follow eastern practises like yoga, meditation or martial arts, you have probably never been taught to breath well.

Better – more conscious – breathing optimises wellbeing, energy and performance and all it takes is more awareness.

It’s the first and most important step to living a healthy, vibrant life – performing at your best.

In this article you will learn about the perfect breath, a profound breathing technique to help you fall asleep every time and the significant difference between nose and mouth breathing.

A quick history lesson

Breath work has been at the foundation of health for thousands of years. The Chinese call the breath ‘chi’ They have a saying ‘when the breath is perfect, the form is perfect’. Whilst many people now enjoy yoga, the focus is often about a good stretch but the original purpose of yoga was breathing work, to move energy around the body. In Sanskrit the word ‘prana’ means life force. Other cultures have their own word for it, the Japanese ‘ki’ the Greeks ‘pneuma’. They all believe we expand our life force when we breathe.

Half a tennis court

Did you know you have 2,400 kms of tubes in the lungs and enough surface area to cover half a tennis court. The question is how much of that court are you playing on?

Ageing

As we age, we lose muscle mass. We also lose lung function. By the time are 80 we have lost 30% of our muscle and lung function. The good news is exercise boasts both and slows this decline by 15%.

Breathe out and lose weight

You might not the lungs are important for weight loss but with every ten pounds of fat lost, eight and half pounds comes out as carbon dioxide and water vapour and the rest is lost through sweat and urination so the lungs are an important weight loss organ.

Elite performance

Elite athletes, astronauts and special forces soldiers are well trained in the art of breathing to increase VO2 – to boast stamina – and to master the mind to be able to focus and remain calm in stressful, life threatening situations requiring the highest level of human performance. Gold medals have been won by forward thinking coaches changing the way athletes breath.

‘Exhale with each rep’

Timo Topp clients are very familiar with the daily reminder to ‘exhale with each rep’. You need to exhale with exertion. Never hold your breath.

Relaxation

We comfort a friend who has received tragic news by telling them to ‘stay calm and take a few deep breathes’. Slow, deeper breathing really does instantly relax you because it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system – the nervous system responsible for growth and repair. It slows the heart rate and dampens the stress response.

Compare this to shallow, rapid breathing which stimulates the sympathetic nervous system – the one that prepares you for fight or flight situations. It’s this type of breathing that typically occurs during long stressful days at work.

Poor, shallow and rapid breathing propagates stress whereas deep, slow breathing relaxes you.

The deeper and more softly we breath, the longer we exhale the slower the heart beats and the more relaxed we feel.

Breath less, live more

The key to optimal breathing for health, endurance, longevity and mental focus is this:

Take fewer breathes: inhale and exhale slower and add longer pauses.

Consider this analogy:

‘Breathing is like rowing a boat. Short, faster strokes pale in comparison to the grace and efficiency of fewer, longer strokes’

 

Nose vs mouth

Do you think there is any difference between breathing through the mouth or nose? You might be surprised to learn that nose breathing is 18% more oxygenating.

Mammals developed a nose to warm, moisten and filter air so that the lungs can extract more oxygen per breath. Therefore, nose breathing is far healthier and more effective than mouth breathing which takes in litres of raw unprocessed, unfiltered air.

5.5

In his book BREATH, ‘The new science of a lost art’ James Nestor (well worth a read!) provides the science for the perfect breath:

• Breathe in for 5.5 seconds
• Exhale for 5.5 seconds
• That’s 5.5 breaths a minute
• Taking in 5.5 litres of air

How many breathes do you take? 

Try it now. Time yourself for one minute and see how many you take.

A breathing technique to get to sleep

Here is a proven breathing technique to help you both relax in stressful situations and it will help you get to sleep. (I personally use this technique when I cannot get to sleep and I always drop off afterwards).

• Sit or lay comfortably. Inhale slowly and deeply through the nose (for a count of 5)
As you do so imagine you are bringing into your body life, energy and relaxation.

• Hold the breath for a pause.

• Exhale slowly through the mouth (for a count of 5). As you do so imagine stress, tension, worry, any negativity leaving your body.

• Repeat this for a minimum of 10 breathes. More if you are particularly stressed or struggling to sleep.

I guarantee you feel more relaxed, energised and get to sleep so much easier after using this technique.

And to conclude, slowly exhale…

Breathing is the FIRST step to better health, optimal performance, more energy, improved calmness, relaxation and health.

First become more conscious of better breathing. Unconscious breathing is typically unhealthy. Conscious breathing enhances health, calmness and performance.

Aim to breathe through the nose, slow and deepen your breathing and increase the pauses between each breathe.

Better breathing equals a healthier life and all it takes is a little awareness to do it better so you can live and perform better.

Simple.