Patrick McKeown explains Ujjayi breathing, a technique with throat restriction that influences your nervous system through exhalation patterns. Slow, prolonged exhalations trigger relaxation and better sleep, while rapid exhalations create stress. The technique reduces minute ventilation, raising carbon dioxide levels and stimulating the vagus nerve.
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I've also talked about the Ujjayi breath and I think I taught it in the sleep challenge, or at least it's one of the free giveaways from something which is a way to rapidly fall asleep. This is something I learned in yoga. Can you talk about the Ujjayi breath and what that does versus all the other ones that you're going to teach us here in a minute?
Yeah, I suppose like with Ujjayi breath, where there's restriction now I don't teach it myself, there's restriction of the throat. We have to ask the question, what's the volume or the tidal volume that's. That's taking part there? I think it's going to vary according to the instructor. You could have one instructor who's taken quite full of breaths and even though there's restriction of the throat and you can hear quite a, quite an amount of noise from the sound of breathing, but you might have another instructor who's taking very light breaths. So the tidal volume is going to be different. And if we think of, if you want to, you know, influence the autonomic nervous system, it's all in the exhalation. If we have a fast and sharp exhalation, we activate a stress response and if we have a slow and prolonged exhalation, we activate the body's relaxation response. So I'm not sure if I'd be doing fast, rapid breathing before going to sleep. I'd be doing the opposite. I'd be downregulating with a very soft breath in through the nose and a really relaxed and slow breath out. Unless what's happening with the U dry breath is that the tide of the respiratory rate is quicker, or it may not be, but the tidal volume is, is smaller, is shorter, and as a result, minute ventilation is reduced. The person is breathing less air and that's going to stimulate the vagus nerve, the increased carbon dioxide. So if you feel air hunger, think that's it. If you feel the air hunger during us, it stimulates the vagus nerve and by doing that, then it's going to bring the body into relaxation and mind.
