You can be exercising regularly, sleeping 8 hours a night, eating perfectly...
And if you're still not doing this one thing.
You are not well.
You are not healthy.
I know the above sounds fairly extreme. And I tend to veer away from extremes (they are often aren't correct, don't take into account nuance etc etc.). And yet I stand by the statements above.
This ONE thing is that important it deserves a place/title as one of the 'pillars' of health (read: not more important than the others).
What am I talking about?
Our breath.
Most of us are breathing so badly, that we are suffering: it's linked with all of the major diseases diabetes, heart disease, immune conditions, (and anxiety and ADHD actually too)*.
You might be thinking, well, it's breathing, we do it automatically. Just how bad can it be?
Turns out, pretty darn awful.
Go back hundreds of years and we DIDN'T have these issues. We did indeed breath well naturally. (What changed? Well, mostly post-industrial foods, they're soft, so we are chewing wayyyyy less, and it means our entire facial structures have changed leading to narrowed airways, overcrowded mouths etc).
Turns out, 95-99% out of us are probably:
- mouth breathing
- using about 5-10% of our diaphragm
- sitting, working and driving in collapsed postures
- have no tolerance for breath holds (and therefore blood carbon dioxide levels)
- sleeping TERRIBLY (again, mouth breathing).
Don't freak out.
Whatever your breathing is like now, I believe you are able to be a strong, healthy breather.
We need to learn how to use our diaphragms again.
We need to learn how to nose breath.
We need to learn how to hold our breaths.
We need to increase lung capacity.
And we can do it all in a beautiful couple of minutes a day that will leave us feeling good.
Things you can try to start with:
- close your mouth
- exercise (increases lung capacity, turns out this is a BIG predictor of longevity)
- improve posture (I generally hate this as a recommendation, it's sh*t. Building some strength with naturally improve your posture - along with your bones and your confidence and your metabolism etc etc ;)
- practice breath work (hi, I'm ya girl! Check out my YouTube and search for breathing)
We cover breath work in Home (both the theory, and the practice).
I believe (and have experienced it) as life-changing.
And our breath is free.
We can literally start this right now, in 10 seconds, for free.
I find that fairly magical.
Let's breathe.
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*I'm never a massive fan of using term 'scientific research' and then not actually providing the full information and resources. So without wanting to provide an overwhelming list of specific studies, I'm linking here James Nestor's bibliography from his book 'Breathe' simply because it provides a decent list of decent studies in a not-too-horrific way. His book is also excellent further reading.
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