Episode 4 Breathing

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You're going to get benefits that people are getting when they meditate. Hello friends. You are listening to the All Things Good for you podcast. I'm your host, Brian Bowen, founder of.

Integrative Health, Inc. And I'm Amy Christiansen, your co host and creator of Amy Christiansen Health and Wellness Coaching.

Join us as we explore the world of health and wellness and all things that make you feel good. From ancient traditions to modern advancements in technologies that give you the tools for.

A life well lived, what new paths might you discover on your health and wellness journey? Tune in each week as we deep dive into a variety of concepts and hear from other fun, passionate health and wellness experts on their experiences and philosophies.

And remember, stay open minded and integrated.

Bye, Brian.

Hey Amy, how are you today?

I'm great.

How are you? I'm doing wonderful. Super excited again as always to crank out another episode with you today and sit here and hang out and talk to our listeners.

Yeah, I was just sitting here quietly taking long, deep breaths, preparing for our podcast today.

I'm going to do that right now. Okay, I did one. I could do more, but let's do this.

Why? Why are we so focused on breathing today?

Well, because I was at the lake yesterday and was with my kids out tubing and having fun on the water, inhaling a lot of smoke from the fires and realized the quality of what we breathe is important, but breathing in general is super important. And you know, it's an automatic function that happens. We only can live for three minutes.

Without breathing, unless you're a deep free diver. There's a guy, his name is Budomir. He held his breath for 24 minutes. I don't recommend people trying that, but he trains, they train and train, but 24 minutes.

So I wonder what happens with the body. So obviously we're going to get into this, you know, what all is happening at a more biological level and so forth. But I wonder what happens in that situation with all the carbon dioxide and stuff like that that you're not letting out how it affects the body. I wonder if that creates a little inflammation in the long run or like, I don't know.

I think I do some training. Even people who do, like, deep diving, that kind of thing, they practice and they build their lungs. And I know you can really train yourself to maintain a balance, but it takes some time and some effort. But like you said, three minutes on average is what we could do without. Do you think that's just oxygen in our system, is that they exchange, like the buildup, like our system cells start to die after three minutes. Do you think that's the generality?

You start organ failure, you start your brain. Your brain's deprived of oxygen and that fails, and then everything else fails. So it's definitely oxygen. And as you know, the first thing that happens in life, the most important thing when you're born, is your first breath. The breath of some people say spirit. Right. And then when we exhale, we basically evaporate, and that's their final breath and death. So, you know, it's amazing. It's the very first important thing. It's the first important thing and the last important thing. So it's amazing how it bookends each other. And then what do we do kind of in life between that is, I feel like we take advantage or don't pay nearly as much attention to our quality of breathing and how we breathe and really understand what it does at a deeper level.

Yeah, I think Latin spiritus, right. That's spirit and the respiration and then pranayama, breath retention. And what is it in Chinese, or.

Is it just considered the Qi in Chinese medicine? The lungs clearly play a vital role as well, and they actually. The air that we breathe in is actually. There's a form, like there's different types of Qi, so it's actually called zhong Qi. And so the zong qi is a very critical part of making blood and so forth. And I can get into that a little bit later. But it's interesting too, just where the lungs are situated because it's higher up on the body, right? Closer to the heavens. And so they actually see the lungs as a very spiritual thing. And it's very much about refining breathing in the refined essence of life and then taking in what is of value and then exhaling out. So the carbon dioxide exhaling out what does not give us any value. So it's actually a really beautiful metaphor for just life in general, too. Right. We need to bring in and receive the things that are nurturing us and the Things that give us quality of life, the things that give us this higher essence of stuff and then exhale anything out that's holding us back or holding onto us that doesn't serve us well.

Yeah, I like that. And like you'd mentioned, I mean, I think this is part of what we want to touch on today is the significance of taking in the good and releasing the bad. And what most people do today, I think the statistics is 70% of what we breathe out or we breathe out 70% of the carbon dioxide in our system, right?

Yep. So that's amazing. So we're still holding on to 30% of something we need to let go of.

As far as I can tell, there's. There's nothing else. We're not missing a boat of how that's being utilized in some way.

Well, I do know that it helps. It does help. Carbon dioxide does actually play a role with ph balance. I believe so. And again, to all the listeners out there, like just doing, knowing what we know and doing a little bit of research just leads you down a rabbit hole of more questions. And really there's, it's amazing how much of a critical and vital role this plays at so many different micro levels too. So there is, you know, it does get absorbed, some of it into the bloodstream and plays a role in the bloodstream. But in general.

Right. So as with what we do here on all things good for you, we want to talk about breathing and why it's good for you.

It's good for you.

That's why it is good for you. It's amazing. But it's even more beneficial than we realize. And obviously a lot of science right now, it is becoming more and more important. Yoga has brought a lot of insights into the breath. And then of course, the iceman Wim Hof brought a lot of attention to breathing in a way that helps alert your system. So we always talk about de stressing. We know that that's good for you and we want people to manage their stress and manage their lifestyle, but in a balance. And speaking of a balance, right, it's. You're wanting some stress is good, right. So there are moments where elevated stress, elevated cortisol, elevated adrenaline in your system is good for your body, actually creates that alertness. It helps with healing and fighting off infection and it helps with focus and activity. So later, as we get into it, we're going to talk about some different techniques for different situations. But recognizing that while it's an automatic body response to just breathe, bringing awareness to when and how to breathe and how we're breathing in certain situations. And we have some control on that. And that has an effect on our body. Whether we want to raise our stress level, quote, unquote, stress level, or raise our alertness, or we want to bring our body down. Right?

That's a great point of this whole conversation. All things good for you is just to always bring more awareness about things we might not know about, about things we know about. But then just give it more depth and start that conversation just to get you really thinking and then also to encourage exploring. And so when we talk about some of these techniques, we're going to go into some of these, but really it's you understanding that this breathing is a function, but it's a tool, too. It allows you to be able to do exactly what Amy said. It allows you to be able to utilize it in a way to serve you in the best way possible, whether you're trying to bring your stress levels down, right, bring your heart rate down, really help benefit you in the balance of that parasympathetic nervous system. Or if you're going into a marathon and you need to get yourself jazzed up, but then bring yourself back down and regulate yourself during this intensity, too. So it's important just to recognize that it's right here. It's available to all of us and even my. Myself, as I'm talking about this and as Amy's talking about this and as I've moved through my weeks, we get caught up in that lack of presence with some of these things. And so to be able to pause and to put the spotlight on that and how it can affect your health, and it's also free.

So for the moment, we're not being charged for breathing.

Well, isn't there, like, I guess if we look at, like, carbon exchange or. I don't know. I'm sure there's some way we can make an argument. Maybe we are.

Hopefully we won't go there, but we can laugh at that for the moment, but we have, over time, like, for whatever reason, have become core breathers. Unless we're paying attention to it. Most of the people out there. What is it? I think 40% of Americans have insomnia or suffer of some sort of insomnia. Is that correct? You're always so good with your statistics, but a high number of people have sleep issues, apnea, insomnia. And all of those, of course, affect breathing. And there are a lot of studies that are coming out now that are showing focused, controlled breathing activities in the morning and then again at night or if you do wake up doing some relaxation breathing techniques help reduce that insomnia apnea which those and alone have such cascading effect negative effect on our bodies right? Insomnia waking up in the middle of the night and apnea where you wake up because you're not breathing, you're slowly suffocating yourself at night your body shoots up a mass amount of cortisol to wake your body up because you've just alerted your sympathetic system. You've come out of your parasympathetic system working. You've alerted your sympathetic system and it's shooting out a whole bunch of cortisol and waking your body up so that you don't die of oxygen oxygen deprivation.

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The body's so smart, it's amazing. So treating people you're. I mean it's. I almost feel like the numbers even crazier. I feel like I could easily say that 70% of the people that I treat in the clinic have some sort of sleep issue. But you usually see that stress and sleep issue are side by side. And it's amazing. Some people don't feel like they have as much stress. But you know, if you're somebody who is busy brained and you are always mentally chewing over and over on stuff, then your stress levels probably you're in that loop cycle. It's probably a lot higher than what you think. So the sleep and this kind of stress really tie in intensely together and that ties into that balance that we talked about in our previous podcast about the balance of that sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system in those brainwave states. So if you're going to sleep and you're stressed, stress is higher. That means you're in a More of a sympathetic state, which means that that brain wave's higher. So you're way up here trying to go to sleep when you need to try to be in more parasympathetic, where that brainwave state is lower. And we know when your brainwave state is lower and you're more parasympathetic, your breath is slower, richer, deeper, calmer. And so when you're in more sympathetic state and the brain waves higher beta, then your breath is going to be faster and more rapid and shallower. So you can see how those pieces just like are critical to the success of the next one.

And let's clarify, when you're breathing in, you're breathing oxygen, not to talk down on it or anything, but that means let's be real clear where you're breathing in your oxygen in addition to a number of particles and elements in the air. And then when you breathe out, you're supposed to be breathing out all your CO2 or at least a large portion. And like we said, most people are only doing 70%. And we pretty much have shallow breathing all the time. Whether that's elevated stress, posture or the fact that as a society, I don't know if it's like this for everybody, but I know for women in particular, we're taught to hold on our stomachs at a very young age or the way it looks. And a lot of people shallow breathe, chest breathe up in high in their upper portion of their lungs, and they're not relaxing and doing a full diaphragmatic breath. They're not utilizing their entire portion of their lungs. So learning to breathe like we did when we were babies, if you've watched a baby sleep, its little belly rises up and down and I know, it's so cute. We don't do that very much. And that's one of the things. Speaking of yoga, I learned early on I did lead yoga classes. I don't claim to be a yogi because I believe that's very intense and long life learning focus, but I did lead yoga classes and when I did that, I learned how to breathe. As an adult, I could teach muscle building, kickboxing courses five hours a day, but I couldn't run a mile to save my life. Honestly, through yoga and breathing, I was able to learn how to train myself to breathe properly and eventually was able to move to Colorado and run half marathons and trail running. So being aware that I was a very healthy, active individual and did not know how to breathe, I didn't know I was improperly breathing So I wonder how many people are out there who are doing the same thing.

Well, I can tell you, for me to tie into just that experience of breathing and not doing it in an appropriate way, I've had in the past some sinus stuff, deviated septums, broken nose, some polyps, all that good stuff in my nose. So I would tend to sometimes more mouth breathe. But I can tell you when those sinuses get inflamed, I feel really foggy headed. I don't feel as grounded. I don't feel like I have as much mental clarity, right. So I know that I'm not getting the right amount of oxygen in my brain and my body. And on top of that, I'm also not being able to breathe through my nose as successfully, which is a filter. And so now I'm sucking in all these nasty particles, you know, which are, is probably causing some irritation and things like that in the lungs. So I can tell you when you do it wrong, it really blows. And when you can do it right, it's really awesome. And when you have it taken away, you really appreciate it.

Mouth breathing is unfortunately, I mean, not to offend anybody or characterize anybody, but mouth breathing is very, very unhealthy. And somehow even our recognition of what is attractive, strong and healthy, there's a lot of science behind it. But even people that don't know that it's bad know that it's not. Okay, so Brian, if you're having a bad allergy day, you let me know. But I'm just going to tell you, shut your mouth when you're breathing around me.

Okay, I will do. I'll listen to you.

That's one of my favorite movie lines, by the way. Shut your mouth when you're talking to me.

What movie is that from?

Oh my gosh, it's from Wedding Crashers.

Okay. All right. I'm embarrassed. I can't actually realize that's from Wedding Crashers.

I really feel like you need to go back and watch that movie a couple times then. Some great lines in there.

Actually, I watched it like two weeks ago.

You did?

I totally did.

It has such great one liners. It cracks me up. So yes, mouth breathing, I believe there's some science coming out. Regardless of our opinions or thoughts or emotional or anything. People have been wearing masks a lot more. And there are some studies coming out that are showing how people have started to slack job more people were breathing through their mouth as well. So I think we're going to see a lot of things come up from that but as little as 240 hours. One study, the guy that wrote the book Breathe, his name is James Nestor, I believe he made a note about how structurally and all of their biological physical changes were happening. As little as 240 hours. They put blocking items up in their nose so that they could not breathe. They had to force themselves to mouth breathe. And they did exercising and sleeping and they tracked everything. Their insomnia went up, the apnea went up, snoring went up, a lot of chemical hormone changes in their body went up, stress levels went up. But they also noticed the soft tissue in their throat and mouth firmness of that and the way they were holding their jaws were changing in just 240 hours of mouth breathing.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of increase with people with neck pain and stuff like that too.

And it's hard because I mentioned this to my mom recently in a conversation. She's like, well, how do you breathe through your nose when you can't, when you're congested? And there are some ways to work around that. There's actually a technique for breathing to help decongest the nose and we can get into that at the end. But working on, the more you do it, the easier it gets. We'll start there.

Well, we breathe on average 1700-2100 times a day. So I can't wait till my Apple watch not only can track my steps, but it can actually track my breath and the quality of my breath as well. Like that would be awesome.

Yep. And there's something called, I haven't used them, but there's something called Spire and expand along that people are using in training. So to help with their breathing techniques and efficiency in breathing, Google's created something that's called, they have a breathing app too now and it helps people do the ideal breath quote, unquote, 5.5 seconds in, 5.5 seconds out with little holds in between. And then Apple Watch of course has done for quite a long time the little you can have that setting that helps you remind you throughout the day to stop and breathe. And I think it's a two minute process where you watch, try to breathe with an expanding circle on your watch.

So I have that, I have that.

And I love those tools. I think they're helpful ways for us to be mindful and aware of how we're breathing. So it is doable for all of us.

Yeah. Again, even moving through your day. And I have a little routine but so we know that breathing has a direct switch to the nervous system. We can control and change our parasympathetic, sympathetic tone with this tool that we have. We have our own dimmer switch that we can utilize to move this up and down. And we know that it affects your stress levels and we know it affects sleep, and there's so much research out around that stuff. But also when you are doing that and utilizing that. And the reason why every type of meditation utilizes breath work in it is because it's so important. So if you're just doing the breathing and putting a little bit that two minute of time or whatever, you're going to get benefits that people are getting when they meditate. So even if you can't sit still for 20, 30 minutes to do a meditation, you're going to get extreme benefit and get some of the same benefits. Because obviously the breath is a key component to the benefits of the body. And yeah, you can jump in on.

That, Amy, just with the awareness, you know, like you said, you have a little routine. And we can be self aware, right, when we're stressed. If you're a nervous driver, if you know you're going into a nervous situation, if you know that you get sugar cravings and you anxiety eat or you stress eat later in the day, there are times you can do to set yourself up to be aware. Like, we kind of know, we know our moments. For me, if I'm woofing down a half a bag of tortilla chips and I'm like, hey, I might be stressed, maybe I should stop and breathe for a minute. But there are people who know that in the afternoon, which ties into other things. But you have sugar cravings or snack cravings and you find yourself eating things that you wouldn't normally consider healthy for you. You can stop and do some breathing activities, and that is helpful. And one of the ways that what that's doing physiologically and the breath activity, and we talk more about that, is that it's engaging vagus nerve and increasing digestion. Right. So we talked a little bit about diaphragmatic breathing. The diaphragm is what helps with lung operation. And as you are breathing in and expanding your lungs, your diaphragm is dropping and pushing on the intestinal tract, pushing on your intestine.

Juicing it, baby.

Yep. Motion is lotion all around.

Motion is lotion.

And then as you breathe out, that diaphragm is pushing up, helping press the air out of your lungs. And that's where a lot of people also are failing to breathe deeply and exhale all of the air out. And while you're massaging your intestinal tracts, as you're breathing in and out, you're also pressing on the heart so you can think of inhaling the lungs are actually pressing into the heart. This pressure kind of speeds up for a number of reasons. The heart. So the heart is going to speed up a little bit and as you exhale, it's going to slow down a little bit. So you can already think, okay, by controlling your breath, you can affect your digestive system, you can affect your heart rate, you can affect your blood pressure. Knowing that you have just those things. We've just addressed three of the major Now I'm not claiming that breath work solves any major medical problems in and of itself, but you can certainly affect it. So we've just talked about heart blood pressure and digestion issues. If you kind of take that leap and say, wow, we can have an effect on at least three disease processes that are very big in our country that are also somewhat self created or controlled, why not even more so Take an opportunity to pay attention to how we use the breath, like you said, as a tool to benefit ourselves. So if you're stressed.

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Taking some breaths and slowing down helps with all those healthy aspects. Jump in here, Brian. I know you got some more to.

Add in, you know, just to throw in some more Chinese medicine stuff just because I'm an acupuncturist. They pair a lot of organ systems together and the lungs enlarged intestine are a paired organ system. The lungs being the yin and the large intestine being the yang aspect of those systems. And the diaphragm is kind of like a unifier of those in the same way that you were talking about it as kind of being a pump but also it Creates separation too.

Hey guys, it's Brian.

I just wanted to take a pause.

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If you haven't done a cadaver class and seen how intense everything's packed in there and kind of touching each other and you know where the liver's at in relationship to the diaphragm and all this other stuff, it's pretty amazing. It's really compact. So each organ system does have a vital role in creating like some pumping mechanisms and things like that, as well as gravity. And so again, just like the lungs, when we breathe in and what you're talking about, the diaphragm, its job is to pull in the refined, the zhong qi, the essence and so forth. And then the large intestine, its job is to receive nutrients before it gets rid of the unwanted stuff. Just like the lungs, gets rid of the carbon dioxide, doesn't serve us any value. Time to let go. Bye bye baby. The large intestines kind of like, okay, I got everything I got out of here. We got the last bit of stuff. It doesn't serve Me? Well, I'm eliminating it. And, you know, that elimination process is so important, but they play just an intense role together. And carbon dioxide production is part of our digestive process from the fuel that's burning and breaking down. So when the stomach rotten, ripens the food. Right. And this breaking down process, it creates this byproduct, carbon dioxide. So we have to get rid of it. And just like we have to eliminate the waste material from the intestines.

That's awesome. I love the way everything just overlaps. It does, yeah. Everything just starts making connections. And if we're breathing out, we're keeping 30% or some people even more. Right. When your body has carbon dioxide in it, it's. It's thinking that it could be dying. Basically, it's aware. It's kind of activating sympathetic. So if you're walking around all the time with too much carbon dioxide, your body is stressed, whether you're mentally stressed or not. And actually, some studies happening now about people with panic attacks and severe anxiety, and they're looking at whether or not really is such an emotional psychological event as much as it is a physiological event that could be triggering those reactions.

So I think there was a large number of people with copd. Is that what you're gonna say, that had anxiety?

You're right. No, absolutely. If you can't breathe, you're gonna be anxious. I mean, my goodness. I mean, can you imagine just what that feels like? It feels horrible. Of course you're gonna be fearful. Your body is. Even if you're not consciously aware of it, your body is definitely aware that it's not getting oxygenated properly.

I would love to see some research in regards to the inflammation process. Like how much, like, if I am operating at 50% of the level, like, what do my inflammation numbers look like? Because if you have extra carbon dioxide that the body can't get rid of through the bloodstream and isn't being utilized for ph or whatever, what does that do to inflammation? Because I know you've probably experienced this before. So when I'm doing some needling with some people or working with people in pain or doing some deep tissue work, we know from our experience, and I'm speaking for you a little bit, Amy. When we have people breathe in and exhale out, Right. They are a lot less sensitive to pressure or to putting an acupuncture needle in or to whatever. And so people that I've touched that tend to be really hypersensitive. We can even talk about fibromyalgia patients like again, I wonder, like in relationship to breathing, times change or not as functional, I guess in breathing techniques to inflammation, hypersensitivity of the nerves, what's happening at a cellular other to pop to potentially change the intercellular environment? Because intercellular environments have to have a proper PH for the ions and all this exchange for these receptors, right? To send out or receive pain signals. So if the oxygen and these chemical environment changes are happening within these receptors, then you could see, well, heck, this thing's not operating the way it should be. Everything's inflamed, everything's more hypersensitive. So technically we're controlling our cells, right? We have access to our cells through our breath or to affecting our neurons. And I think it's pretty freaking cool.

It's amazing. I mean, just talking in that aspect, if I'm working on somebody and I'm doing a deep trigger point and that's one of the things we say is like, you know, it takes about anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds typically to help if that's going to release. If you can take a deep breath as a client and breathe through and exhale deeply through that, that muscle group is much more likely to release. I think a few things are happening. I think that yes, there's a cellular aspect that's happening in the ph level and everything. But when we're doing that deep diaphragmatic breathing, we're addressing that communication of the brain via the diaphragms having the phrenic nerve. It's actually de stressing. So what they do know is that that panic feeling in our body when like I was saying, like our body knows even though we don't know. There is an aspect of the amygdala stimulation, right? So your breathing is actually desensitizing and turning off the amygdala stimulation. That's where you're getting that CO2 overwhelm. Your body is sending a panic emergency signal. It's bringing your sympathetic system on. And so we know that if your sympathetic system is like out of control or super heightened, things that don't normally hurt, hurt more. So I feel like it's just again, it's this beautiful little cyclical system. We have this beautiful body, mind and spirit connection that we have where the breath not only does something on the cellular side, it does a chemical hormone release. It's literally affecting our organs, our cells, and then bringing our brain and our body and our system into this more balanced state. And it's kind of tying together the woo woo and the science, right? I love it when that happens.

Yeah. Yeah, I love the woo. Woo. Science. Some science is awesome. Some science is awesome. Woo. Woo. And again, this goes back to your experience. And this is why one of the main purposes of this podcast is to get you to explore all things good for you. Right. And going back to, I think, episode one, we were talking about how just for all of us to learn how to pay attention to our little sensors. Like our fancy cars have all these little sensors telling us when our tire pressure is low and telling us when this or that and so forth. And so we have all these little sensors and, you know, tying into what you're saying, if you feel a little spazzy, if you feel like your head's mentally chewing on stuff over and over, it means that you're stressed. That most likely then there means that you're not breathing right. And we can control that by like, wait a second, I'm in beta. Remember from a couple episodes ago? Feeling a little stressed out. Feeling a little like, busy brain. Stop. That means you're in high beta. We don't need to be there. We want to be in beta. We're going to use our breath, we're going to slow it down and bring it down a notch, which helps feel you feel more grounded, more present.

Release gaba, by the way. And theta GABA is the natural kind of depressor. It kind of relaxes and energizes the brain a little bit. If you would. That's in theater.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like we're doing a little GABA right now, too.

Oh, we're so gabby. Okay, we're funny.

Okay, so we can layer this and layer this, but, like, just. We also know it affects all of our organs. Like the breath that we bring in and the oxygen. Every organ we have relies on it. But one thing I would like to talk a little bit more about just real quick, is the effects on the musculoskeletal system.

Yeah.

If that's okay with you. Yeah, definitely. So let's talk about something that I see on a regular basis. And another way you can tell somebody's not breathing as well as they should is the organs in the lungs, especially in heart, and so forth. And what we call the upper jiao is surrounded by the ribs. So the ribs attach from the first thoracic vertebrae to the 12th. And actually, they're not fixed. They move. They shift a little bit. Well, they're supposed to, but yeah, they're supposed to. Yes, they're supposed to shift and move. They articulate, they're not like part of the bone, they articulate to the spine, but not to get too much into the anatomy of it. But one thing is ribs should be kind of buoyant. So when you push down on them and let up, they should kind of depress and expand. And so the breath and breathing has a dual effect on the ribs, but the ribs have an effect on the lungs and so meaning that when the lungs expand, the ribs have to expand too, and kind of stretch out, if you will. And then therefore, when the lungs let all the air out, the ribs kind of shift back. But you have muscles between the ribs. And if any of us have eaten some barbecue, those meaty, delicious, tender part is actually the internal and external intercostal muscles, which is slightly disturbing to think about that. We're not going to think about that too much, but they play a role. So when you're breathing, you're working these muscles, right? And it's causing these ribs to lift and shift and, you know, so forth. And the important part of that is when all of that's happening, if all that's working well, the lungs can expand to its maximum volume and capacity, where you get the most benefit. Right?

But at the same time, your lungs, when they. I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you know that your lungs are. If you take a. All your lung tissue and stretched it out, it's the size of a tennis court. I just wanted that, by the way.

Oh, I didn't know that.

I didn't know.

Good reading.

Sorry I interrupted.

And that might be urban legend, but hopefully not. No, I'm just kidding. So, but tying into that, it's important because if those ribs aren't moving, then it causes a fixation in the spine, which affects your mobility, therefore leading to back pain, therefore leading to intercostal pain, therefore leading to so forth. If that spine is locked up in the thoracic, then it affects and dictates the movement in your neck and in your low back too. So it's very important because it's a pivotal part in the human movement system as far as in the skeletal system within the spine. So it's just stinking important, people.

Once again, it all ties together and people don't think about their ribs moving. Well, I don't know how many people I work on that we actually do stretches and intercostal trigger point releases are very small and little, but that's very rarely addressed. I started doing that when I was working on, like semi and pro cyclists. They work on expanding their rib cage, but really Interesting how it all ties together. And while we're talking about all the different ways, I want to talk about how breathing affects weight loss. Right. So your triglycerides, fat in the body is three kinds of atoms. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, right? So your body is storing that energy as fat. Fat breaks down to H2O, so water and carbon dioxide. When you breathe out, you're breathing out carbon dioxide. So I think we chatted like there's a large percentage of your fat that you actually are breathing out. Your lungs are significantly responsible for weight loss, for dispelling and expelling your fat.

22 pounds of fat turns into 18.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is exhaled when you breathe, and 3.5 pounds of water that's then excreted through urine, tears, sweat, and other bodily fluids.

You got it. So breathing is super important. Now, there is some debate whether or not you can just sit there and pant and lose weight. I think if you hyperventilate, that is maybe counterproductive in other ways. So it's just not worth it. But that is why you work in the quote unquote, fat burning phase, right? The anaerobic versus aerobic. When you're working out to burn fat, you're having this beautiful little, Remember Krebs cycle from science and anatomy that everybody hates. It's that process of your body breaking down fat for energy, and that's the tie in of the carbon dioxide becoming, releasing, and using that quote, unquote fog, right? Using that stored energy. So getting up and moving your body in such a way that you are healthily, safely breathing through your nose as much as possible. There are some times where it's feasible and understandable to breathe through your mouth when you're doing running and some certain exercises that was not going to jump over into the technical side of mouth breathing that is important, like getting up and just taking a brisk walk. That's why it's important to get your heart rate up. It's not only are you building your heart and your circulation, you're working your lungs, you're burning fat. It's a beautiful thing.

And make sure, like tying into that exercise stuff that you are breathing. Because I've seen plenty of people exercise and not breathe and still, like, hold their breath and not be aware. So I think, in general, Amy, would you say, like most breathing techniques, and I shouldn't say all. There are some, but most of them usually follow a rule of in through your nose, out through your mouth. You can also do in through one nostril out of one nostril. But it's rarely I don't see too many where it's in through your mouth, out through your mouth or in through your mouth out through your nose. Right. It's usually nose to mouth.

Right. And there's a lot of science even more so pulling towards full on nose breathing entirely and avoiding even pursed lip breathing. Now there's pursed lip breathing for a reason. There are times for it. It does help. But some of these techniques like I think even.

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Like Wim Hof I believe is even like Pranayama where you like fire breathing, right? You're really, really raising your energy and alertness and you're breathing very, very quickly through your nose and then doing a very long slow exhale and then doing very, very fast breathing in and out through your nose of the long exhale. I believe the exhale is through your mouth on those. I haven't studied those hard and fast, but I believe that's the way it is.

And there's a million different combinations of breathing and just like there's exercise like. And I think I am a person that loves diversification. I was working out with my daughter yesterday at the gym and we did three sets on a muscle group. But the first set, trust me, I'm not getting off track here. I know what I'm doing here. Amy, don't get nervous.

I've got my fishing pool ready.

All right, get to you. Tell me when you're reeling me back. So we did three different reps but the first one we did was super slow, so 10 second negatives, 10 second positives. The second rep we went heavy and tried to only hit six reps. And then the third sets we did 21. So halfway down, from halfway up, halfway down and then full reps. And my point is with that is you can play with all these different numbers because they do something different. So you are unique to you. And there's plenty of techniques out there and research out there for different things, but there's plenty of stuff that at the end of the day, you only know you. So I know why I like to do 21s. I know why I like to do super slows, right? So getting into these techniques, you have to play to find out what's right for you. So Dr. Andrew Weil, he had a four, seven, eight exercise where it's. And you do three reps. So it's. What is it? A four second count and hold through the nose. Seven sec count, hold and then eight second exhale right through the mouth. And so that's just again, 4, 7, 8. That's the number you mentioned earlier. 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out. So there's a ton of techniques to play with. What's more, Amy, what's more?

Well, Navy SEALs master boxed breathing, it's for balance and grounding. They use that to keep themselves calm and efficient. And that's similar. You know, you breathe in for like say 4 seconds, you hold for 4 seconds, you breathe out for 4 seconds, you hold for 4 Seconds, you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out. Now that could be 4, 5, 6, 7, whatever works for you. It's the idea of doing this consistently little breathing process that's more for just balance work and steadying yourself. So like steady state meditation almost. And then there's more of de stressing, not distressing, but de stressing, calming breathing. And that you can use with the alternating nostril breathing. Well, nostril breathing is also really more of a grounding and balancing. But if you use one side or the other, this is where it gets, I think, really interesting. I'm going to look in some more to this because it's very fascinating. But apparently if you breathe in your left side of your nostril, you're activating the right side of your brain. And if you breathe in the right side and out of your right side nostril, you're activating the left side of your brain. And furthermore, it's different how that affects men and women. So males and females are different. There's some new research. I mean, it's not new, but it's confirming stuff that's coming out on that. So it's really interesting on when you would do that and why you would do it for women, particularly from what I've read is that if you do left nasal breathing, you're activating your calm and your creative state. If you do the right, you're doing more activated, focused, alerted state.

I should have listened to you before I did that because I just did the wrong side then. So now we're in trouble. But I'm a spaz.

But alternating, basically, you're breathing like, let's say you're going to hold a finger against your right. You would breathe in your left hold, close your left nostril and breathe that out your right nostril hold, breathe in your right nostril, close off the right nostril, breathe out your left hold. So you're kind of. You're breathing in one side and closing it off, breathing out the other side, closing it off and then repeating that. So that's the alternating nostril breathing. And then my favorite is the physiological sigh, which we all do a little bit automatically. And this was discovered back or highlighted or, you know, whatever in 1930. And basically it's two very big full breaths in with a little bit of a hold and then a fairly quick kind of a little bit of a forced breath out. Whether it's through your nose or your mouth, it doesn't matter. But it's that little quick breath, but you can do it slower than that. I did it fast. That's a physiological sigh, and that's been shown to create enough inhale and a forced longer exhale to help dispel some of that carbon dioxide in your body and helps your body relax and calm down. So that's a good one to do if you know that you're going to be in a stressful situation or you're trying to just settle your system a little bit, is to do that physiological sigh.

Sounds like one of the important key points and takeaway of that too, is on the exhale, no matter which one you do to try to see. I noticed there's different techniques where you actually make more noises or like glowy bubbles or whatever it is, but really see if you can really get the last of it out as much as you can and kind of hold for whatever longer count on the exhale.

And I think if anybody walked away with anything today, don't pass out. Be careful. I know there's some medical conditions where you want to not be messing with your breathing techniques and pressing any of that, but if you we walk away with one thing, it's to try to exhale deeper, longer, deeper, longer. Good.

Can I share one of my favorite techniques?

Yes, please.

Thank you so it's kind of my own little spin on a couple things, but I call it global breathing. So I'll do this before I do some of my other meditations. So this is this foundation or kind of start before I go into a meditation, whether it's a static meditation or a moving meditation. So what you're going to do is put your right hand on your belly button and put your left hand on the center of your chest. And so this is going to incorporate. Think about north, south, east and west. Okay? So a lot of times people just, they breathe and they're always higher up in their lungs. And so their neck gets tight and shoulder. So they're breathing up. Right. Well, people are really familiar with. The second thing is more that diaphragmatic breathing, breathing lower. But I think the east, west breathing is not often utilized or thought about. So what that looks like, and I call it global because we're trying to access the uppermost part of our lungs, the lower part, and then globally, kind of the lateral kind of whole part together. And so again, right hand on belly button, left hand on center of chest. You're going to breathe in through the nose. You're going to go north first. So you should feel your chest rise underneath your hand. You shouldn't feel movement under your opposite hand. And you can switch hands, whatever. I'm sure there's a girl guy thing for this too. We can throw in there. But chest rises, you should feel the chest rise. The belly shouldn't move too much into the nose. Exhale out through the mouth, get it all out, hold for a count. So you play with your count. And then after that you're going to alternate, then you're going to go south breathing. So stomach goes up and chest shouldn't rise. In through the nose, out through the mouth, exhale it all out, hold at the bottom for a couple seconds. And then you're going to go east, west. So pretend you have fish gills on the side of your body. So if you were to draw a line from your underarm to your hip, right. And about level with the nipple on the side of the body. Pretend you have little fish gills right there. And so when your hands on your stomach and your chest, you're going to breathe outwards, trying to pretend you're opening those fish gills.

And you can do this if you want to.

Yes. And you can totally do that and do the nose. And so what that also does is it puts a really nice stretch in those intercostals on the ribs. So you're going to inhale through the nose. Exhale. Now, if somebody's not used to doing this, it's going to feel impossible. So you might want a partner to put their hands right on your side and tell you when they feel your ribs actually expanding outwardly. It is possible. But that way it's getting the complete lung and really getting the complete ribs as well and just accessing some different parts. So have fun with that. Global breathing.

I like it.

So I think we listed about five different breathing techniques and there's about five million more out there. But I think a good recap is that we need to really put the spotlight on us and breathing and our quality of breathing and our frequency of breathing and how we utilize that as a tool to affect and balance our nervous system, change our stress levels, change our mindset, help us become more present, help us regulate our emotions because we have control over those two. Improve our sleep, affect all of our organs, effects on the musculoskeletal system, detox and weight loss and so many other things.

So many things. The next time you hear somebody say just breathe, don't get mad at them. They really care.

That's absolutely right. Well, I had fun talking with you today, Amy. And I think some homework for everybody. I think last time we gave some homework for everybody to pay attention to where they are in theta beta alpha delta and kind of check in with that. This ties right into that as far as making sure you have little stops and checks along the way. Check in to see where you're at with your brain waves, apply some breathing techniques to that. Know it's benefiting things that beyond what we can imagine and try to practice as frequently as you can.

Absolutely awesome.

Good talking, Good talking. Thank you to everybody. Thank you, Amy. As always. I love it. Enjoy talking to you. We'll talk to you later.

All right, have a great one. Bye, guys.

Thanks, bye.

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