Fit Soul Chapter 13 - Breathtaking

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. Welcome to fit soul Chapter 13 Chapter 13 Every week I release a new chapter from my book Fit Soul, which you can also grab for free at fitsoulbook.com in digital version or there's also a print version there you can order to your house. I actually think the print version turned out really well. Get a lot of good feedback from that. So either way though, both of those are available and I'm also of course releasing a chapter each week on this very podcast. So let's let's delve in chapter 13 Breathtaking respiratory physiology is absolutely fascinating to me. So fascinating in fact that I have a host of breathwork, information, research and self experimentation I've published over the years. I'll include a handy list of all of those on the resources page for this chapter@fitsoulbook.com Chapter 13 that's fitsoulbook.com Chapter 13 those will allow you to take a deeper dive into all the breathwork podcasts and articles I published in the past. But for now, just pause for a moment, take a deep breath in through your nose, then out through your mouth, releasing all tension in your body as you do so, and then dwell upon the complex and wonderful science of that single breath. That single breath you just took began with your nose. Your nasal passages are quite similar to a high tech air conditioning and purifying system. They filter out large dust particles and microbial spores via the mucosa membrane that lines your nasal cavity where sticky mucus is secreted to trap and dispose of impurities. The nasal passages warm and humidify the air you breathe, primarily by the means of a rich blood supply below the mucous membrane. This blood acts as a kind of chemical cleanser of your respiration. Despite a microsecond contact time with the nasal mucosa. Your inspired air during this time is cleared of ozone, sulfur dioxide and other water soluble pollutant gases far better than it's cleared by breathing through your mouth. In fact, nitric oxide or no is a very important substance produced in large quantities in those nasal sinuses. When you inhale through your nose, NO accompanies the inhaled air in order to dilate the bronchial tubes to allow the air to pass through easily. NO also has antimicrobial properties that can kill viruses and bacteria that have escaped from the cilia inside your nose and throat. Interestingly, including problematic compounds such as coronavirus, NO also causes the blood vessels inside your lungs to dilate, which allows oxygen to be transferred to your blood more easily. This phenomenon also does not occur when you breathe through your mouth anyways. After being warmed and cleaned, the air passes into your windpipe or trachea and from there it diverts into two large branches, the main bronchi, where it continues the cleaning process via removal of finer particles, followed by progressive branching into increasingly smaller bronchi called bronchioli, the mucous membrane lining. These bronchi also contain cells with cilia, tiny whip like hairs that beat directionally to move a layer of mucus upwards towards your throat, where the mucus and the particles it has entra can become swallowed. Each of those bronchiolus terminates in a tiny air sac called an alveolus which contains enzymes to dissolve mucus, thus keeping the alveoli from getting plugged up by the mucus along with a soapy substance called surfactant which keeps the moist alveoli from collapsing due to surface tension. Within the walls of each of these 800 million-ish alveolus in your lungs are tiny tightly packed blood vessels or capillaries with incredibly thin walls where gas exchange can take place. Used dynamic deoxygenated blood coming into your lungs from the veins via your heart contains a surplus of carbon dioxide which is exchanged for oxygen through those alveoli. The prepared oxygenated blood is then returned to your heart for circulation to the rest of your body, where the oxygen then drives all the metabolic reactions that give your cells life. This entire sequence only takes about 1.5 seconds, and during that process your heart is spreading 8 tons of blood over a lung area of half the size of a tennis court, then shunting it back into circulation around about 100,000 times a day. This incredible respiratory system I've just described to you has such an abundance of functional reserve built into it that studies have shown that people can lose nearly 3/4 of their lung tissue before serious respiratory difficulty develops. It's a staggeringly elegant system showing every sign of being a complex, intelligently designed loop that allows you to maintain energy and life via something as seemingly simple as as your breath. Five ways a breathwork practice can make your life better but breathing goes far beyond a mere exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. For example, in the fascinating book Breathing is a Spiritual Experiencing the Presence of God, author Will Johnson describes how Western spiritual traditions like the Book of Genesis, the Jewish teachings of Ruach, and the poetry of Rumi all contain hidden instructions for meditative breathing practices. He explains how breathing practices can bring you closer to a direct experience of the palpable presence of God. I've personally found many of his ideas to be quite insightful and I've been able to positively enhance my long walks, spiritual disciplines, meditation practice, connection to God, prayer time, sexual experiences, stress response and much more just by using my breath. So I'm going to give you five such examples. First, your breath is crucial for full mindfulness and presence. It's absolutely mind boggling the extreme clarity that one simple, focused breath can give you an earth shattering what can occur in your brain with 5, 10, 20, 30 or even 60 minutes of breath work. But start anytime you desire to be more present and mindful. Whether you are playing with a child, sitting in traffic, firing through emails, preparing for a workout, getting ready to eat a meal or reading a meaningful text, just take one to three slow mindful breaths. The basic technique for mindful breathing is to focus your attention on your breath. The inhale and exhale with openness and childlike curiosity. As you inhale, preferably through the nose and exhale, preferably through slightly pursed lips. Even if it's just for 60 seconds, you should notice how your body feels. Bring your awareness to any part of your body that feels tense, then contract and subsequently relax those muscles. Then bring your awareness back to your breath. Notice where you feel your breath most in your body. Settle into relaxation as you follow the sensation of each inhale and exhale. If your mind wanders, simply acknowledge the sensations, thoughts or feelings that arise with open curiosity like wispy clouds passing from one ear across to the other ear, and then just let them go. Continue to gently direct your attention back to your breath for as long as you'd like. I suspect the reason this type of pause allows you to be present and mindful is that the relaxed breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, shifting you from a state of hyper alertness scanning for danger and somewhat shallow focus to a more blissful state of depth and awareness towards whichever activity you're engaged in. Of course, this can be used in reverse. Also, you can do one to three minutes of rapid hyperventilation breathing to psych you up for a workout, wake you up in the morning, or prepare you for a competition. Breath is in fact the best free method you own to shift your nervous system in any direction that you desire. Learn that skill and your life will be better for it. I have an article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called how to blast you and your child's physical, mental and spiritual resilience through the roof with breathwork. I'll link to that article on the Resources page for this chapter@fitsoulbook.com Chapter 13 along with plenty of other tools and tactics for learning breath work now second, your breath can optimize your sleep There's a multitude of relaxing breathwork options to prepare for sleep, several of which I talk about in chapter 16 and also in chapter 3 of my book boundless@boundlessbook.com two of my favorite forms of nighttime breathing are a double inhale to exhale and a 4, 7, 8 pattern for the former. My friend and neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman claims that breaking up one long inhale as a double inhale, like a. Through your nose and then exhaling through your mouth, can calm you instantly. It definitely seems to work. And in addition, Dr. Andrew Weil, in a podcast interview with me, described how he favors a four, seven, eight protocol, which is a four count in, seven count, hold eight count out. And that also seems to work quite well for relaxation and sleep, probably because based on a concept called cardiac coherence, a long, relaxed exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, slows the heart rate, and increases heart rate variability, a sign of overall nervous system resilience and a de stressed state. Now, notably, I've found a 4, 8 pattern with just a brief pause at the top of the inhale to work pretty much just as well as a 4, 7, 8 pattern, but others like the 4, 7, 8. So you may have to experiment with it. But I think the benefits of a long, relaxed exhale go beyond just the nervous system. As I mentioned in chapter 16 of Boundless, I also view this long breath out as a sign of trust in God. Trust that the next breath in will be there, waiting to fill me with life. So each night as I fall asleep to the gentle diaphragmatic lull of my own four count in, eight count out breath work pattern, I'm silently thanking God and trusting God that there will be yet more oxygen available to me for my next inhale. Indeed, the mere act of mindful breathing combined with a silent gratefulness to God for each and every breath is a wonderful practice and one I recommend you try the next time you're stuck in, say, 20 minutes of traffic or blasting through emails. After all, our great Creator smiles when we worship him. And I certainly think that no king would complain of a subject entering their throne room for several minutes and saying with the deepest gratitude with each breath, thank you, thank you, thank you. The opposite also holds true. Hastily sucking your breath in with shallow chest breathing and rapid exhales is not only a fast track to activating your fight and flight sympathetic nervous system, but also a sign that you've set aside trust in God to instead greedily consume the air around you like a glutton, stuffing their face to sickness with every morsel they can find at the dinner table, because who knows if they'll be blessed with the same provisions the next day now. Third, certain breathing strategies can vastly enhance your sexual experience. In the book Finding God Through Sex Spiritual Sexuality, author David Deida presents a way to make love in which sex becomes an erotic act of devotional surrender that he describes as making love, magnifying love from the boundless depth of your heart, through every inch of your body and in merger with your lover. As you can also read in David's book Way of the Superior man, breath is an integral part of the practice that David teaches. Breathwork paired with sex has absolutely transformed my own lovemaking experience in such a powerful way that I often wish, with no regrets but just gratefulness that I discovered it earlier. During sex, conscious breathing can help connect you with your body and intensify your sensations. In fact, breathing may be the most underused tool in your sexual arsenal. With the right type of breathing during sex, you can awaken sensitive nerve endings and experiment with different rhythms, patterns and even shifts in temperatures and blood or the flow of qi. For example, during foreplay, you can rock back and forth with your partner, your face close to theirs, timing your breath so as your partner exhales, you inhale and vice versa. Play with your breath this way as you face each other, rubbing noses together, brushing cheeks together, teasing but not kissing, gently touching lips occasionally and continuing to breathe together for several minutes. During this time, you can breathe onto a sensitive part of your partner's body to warm it, then move away as you exhale to cool it back down. During sex, avoid muffling or altering your sexual groaning or grunts into moans or sighs, which can cause the rhythm of your breath to become unnatural. Instead, take deep, full inhales and exhales and welcome the audible sounds you might make as you do this. To intensify your orgasms, you can slow down your breath just before you climax and take one deep inhale, imagining energy traveling all the way from your sexual organs up to the top of your head with a giant breath that you trap at the top of your head. If you combine this with a contraction of your pelvic musculature, you'll often find that it keeps you from experiencing a full orgasm, after which you can exhale and continue the act of lovemaking for a longer period of time. This tantric sex tactic is something I learned in the book the Multiorgasmic man, which is an excellent companion to David Dita's two books I cited earlier and fourth Breathwork Incidentally, fasting also pairs perfectly to prayer. There's a concept in many religions, including Christianity, of spiritual breathing. Like physical breathing, spiritual breathing is a process of exhaling the impure and inhaling the pure. For example, while praying during an exhale you may confess a sin or release a negative emotion like shame, anger, or fear. Then, during the inhale, you can ask God to empower you to release any temptation you may have towards that sin while breathing in or dwelling upon positive emotions such as peace, love and joy. Or you may simply think or say one small phrase, such as fill me on the inhale and then forgive me on the exhale. In most cases, spiritual breathing during prayer simply involves some type of confession or release on the exhale, followed by trust, love, and forgiveness on the inhale. Now you can check out a link that I'll include on the resources page for this chapter@fitsoulbook.com Chapter 13 to learn more about Breath Prayer as an Ancient Spiritual Practice the Breath of Life finally, and most importantly, breath is integral to life itself. I must have read C.S. lewis's Chronicles of Narnia nearly a dozen times when I was a boy. In the first book of the series, the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan, the King of Narnia, comes across creatures that were transformed into stone statues by a witch. He breathes on them and they transform from lifeless blocks of stone into sentient, warm blooded creatures. Once again, this is a perfect depiction of our own creation as humans. In the book of Genesis, God breathed into the nostrils of the first man, Adam, and that was the final step for Adam to become a thinking, feeling creature. As a matter of fact, the popular phrase breath of life comes originally from a verse in Genesis describing the creation of man. Genesis 2. 7 says, the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. In other words, it was a breath from God that transformed us from a lifeless corpse into a living human being. We find this same concept of of the breath of life scattered frequently throughout Scripture, including in texts such as John 20:22. And with that he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. That's the same magical elixir that I talk about in chapter 9 job 27 3. As long as my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils. Ezekiel 37:6 and I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Psalms 156 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Indeed, I'm a miracle. You're a miracle. And our bodies, including our respiratory systems, are absolutely also miracles. You should be in awe and thankful for the magical complexity of breath every day. I recommend you begin by silently thanking God with each and every breath that you take. When you engage in daily, mindful breathing, even if just for one minute, eventually that emotion of gratitude will subconsciously become woven into every breath you take. Summary Ultimately, I believe that an intimate connection to your own breath is one of the best gifts you can give to yourself, your loved one, or your children. I'd even go so far as to say that I believe some kind of breath training should ideally be woven into the educational curriculum or parenting protocol for every young human on the planet. I've even taught many of the tactics I've just described to you to my own twin boys, and they can now turn to their breath for sleep study, meditation, focus, prayer workouts, and even ice baths. Finally, if you want to take a deep dive into all things breath, I have done so many podcasts and articles on it. So if you were to pair a digestion of all of these along with the breathwork course, I'll include a link to on the resources page for this chapter, you'll be well on your way to becoming a true breath ninja. Now, do you have a breathwork practice? Have you found certain breath resources to be helpful? Do you use your breath to not only enhance your physical and mental health, but also your spiritual health? If not, consider starting today. Despite the extreme importance of your breath, it is here that I cannot resist a bit of a religious pun. Specifically by telling you that despite what so many Breatharians believe, humans cannot live by breath alone. You actually need actual caloric nourishment too. So in the next chapter I'm going to share with you my perspective on the spiritual side of food. But in the meantime, for resources, references, links, and additional reading and listening material for this chapter you can visit fitsoulbook.com chapter13 that's fitsoulbook.com chapter13.