The Zen of “The Zone” – How To Breathe The Right Way When You’re Working Out.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And today we are going to talk about breathing, breathing during exercise and how it relates to you getting into something called the Zone. And the reason that we're going to talk about this is because I've personally been experimenting a lot with the way that I breathe while I'm running, while I'm riding my bike, while I'm lifting weights, while I'm sitting or standing at work, and even before I go to bed at night. And I've found that really, really affected my well being and my performance. And I've kind of delved into a few different books on the topic and have spoken to a few people about what I've been doing. And one athlete that I was talking to at a recent conference I was at asked me if I've ever heard of this guy named John Douillard, and I hadn't. And this athlete directed me to a book that, that John wrote. It's called Body, Mind and Sport, the Mind Body Guide to Lifelong Health, Fitness and your Personal best. And this book kind of delves into what we're going to talk about today. And of course I'll link to the book in the show notes. But it's chock full of some really cool concepts about how to breathe the right way. And it really delves into some other kind of interesting things I want to get into like body typing and kind of knowing how to exercise and how to breathe based on your body body type and exercising your mind with your body and some really cool stuff. So John Duyard is right here on the call with me and John. Welcome.

Great to be here, Ben. Thank you.

Now, you've done a lot of stuff. I noticed that you've worked with the NBA. You direct this Life Spa Ayurvedic retreat center in Boulder, Colorado. You have six kids, which is in and of itself pretty impressive. And you have a ton of books and CDs and DVDs, but it looks like you kind of specialize in a lot of this sports medicine type of stuff. So how'd you get into all this?

Well, it was my first love. I was a triathlete years ago in the early 80s and I was okay. I was always trying to be competitive. I was living in the South Bay where triathlons were booming and they were just really, just starting. I was just so hooked on it because I knew I could do it. Then all of a sudden I wanted to be competitive and I was mediocre. But I was training really, really hard. Training really, really hard. I went to this Ayurvedic lecture. It wasn't really an ayurvedic. It was the Indian guy giving a lecture on Indian sort of philosophy. And I went up to him afterwards, which is so not my style, but I was just really curious. I said, you know, I'm wondering if, what do you think about doing an ironman? And he was like, what is that? And I described him what an Ironman was. Two and a half miles to him, 110 mile bike, 26 mile run. He looked at me and said, why do you do that? And I said, hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Had no answer for him. I was like completely stumped by that question. And he looked at me like I was an idiot. And I sort of felt like one and said, do you meditate? And I said, yes, yes, I do that. I definitely do that. Learned that when I was. My mom gave me that as a gift when I was 18. So I did that and he looked at me and he said, do you sleep while you meditate? And I said, yeah, absolutely. I get really deep sleep. It's phenomenal. It's like the best sleep ever. And he looked at me again like I was sort of an idiot and said, he said when you meditate, you're supposed to maintain a state of restful alertness, not sleep. When you sleep, you're too, you're exhausted, you're tired, you're dull, and there's nothing good about when you meditate that you fall asleep. And he went on kind of, you know, badgering me about how exhausted I was. And I said, so what you're trying to tell me here is that if I can meditate and not fall asleep and I can exercise as much as I want and do an iron man. He goes, yeah, just. Yes. And that, that in the end chapter, last chapter of my book is called Jet Fuel. It was my story, that story. And I started training less and training less because I kept falling asleep when I meditated. And the more less I trained, sort of the more I slept. And I realized there was just a ton of fatigue. So I started going away on weekend meditation retreats and started getting a little bit of improvement. Then I went away on a two week retreat. I never done it. All I did was meditate. And I was in these beautiful hills and somewhere in California and. And I want him to run so bad, you know, and I just didn't. And I came back from that retreat and I was shot out of a cannon. I went out, I literally felt like I was Shot out of a cannon. And to make a very long story short, I can tell you many stories around this story. You know, I went from being sort of a mediocre triathlete to a top 10 triathlete in most of the events I competed in and you know, became a competitive triathlete, you know, and even raced a couple of professional races towards the end of my career. And that was the story. And I realized that less is more and I felt it and experienced it. I mean completely, totally experienced it. All my friends who are, you know, really elite athletes at that time, you know, I was in chiropractic. I didn't mention I was in chiropractic college. And that's how I was treating a lot of these athletes and getting into sports medicine and, and they thought, they all were convinced I was doing steroids. Absolutely convinced that I was juicing. Absolutely. And I wasn't at all, you know, and it was just an amazing experience. So that, that launched me into div, you know, this knowledge and ended up going to India, spent about a year and a half studying ayurvedic medicine there, piecing the less is more principles together. Understood breathing. That's the land of breathing. And Pranayama really understood that and then came back to the States and did research on that and found that when you actually nasal breathe versus mouth breathe, it's a completely different experience. When you see a bear in the woods, the last thing you would do is sit there and take a big breath through your nose and go right. You would see the bear and you would take a big gasping emergency breath that would tell your brain that there's a bear chasing you. The upper chest receptors that you breathe into in a gasping way are full of stress receptors that tell you there's a bear chase and you get up that tree, save your life. And the rib cage has a thing called elastic recoil which squeezes down clamps down really on your heart and your lungs and your rib cage. 26,000 breasts per day. So all day long the ribcage is getting tighter, tighter, tighter. And we're breathing more shallow, more shallow, more shallow. And soon we can't breathe into our lower lobes or your lungs. And guess what's in the lower lobes? Well, the exact opposite receptors, the calm receptors, the repair receptors, the rejuvenative receptors, they're all in the lower lobes. And guess what else is in the lower lobes? That 60 to 80% of the blood for exchanging the oxygen in and the waste out is also. It's a gravity fed system it all hangs out in the lower lobes of your lungs. The vagus nervous stimulates brainwave, which we measured with brainwave studies and found that if you breathe through your nose, that you can produce during sub maximal exercise, vigorous esque exercise, that you can produce a meditative calm brain during vigorous exercise. As soon as you open your mouth.

That I wanted to actually ask you about, that's what you refer to in your book and in your teachings as the zone, right?

That's exactly it. So it's, you know, all of a sudden I'm in a meditative calm, going as fast as I can, you're in the zone, you know.

Yeah. And as far as being in the zone, you know, and relating this to this whole less is more kind of concept that you go into, is that one of the keys, I mean, is finding the ability to be in the zone during exercise or I guess, you know, during your day to day activities in life or one of the keys to this less is more training.

I think it's a side effect. It's the result of being able to breathe efficiently. Most of us breathe extremely inefficient. So one of the things I talk about is developing what's called respiratory efficiency, full respiratory efficiency. And once you have that, then running and going into the zone, creating that less is more. My best races, my easiest race experience, is a natural byproduct. You're not pushing yourself, breaking yourself down to build yourself up. You're actually creating an inner experience of comfort and composure and calm. And you're like the eye of the hurricane, you could say. And you're slowly building the winds around that eye, around that silent storm. And then eventually the bigger the eye, the more powerful the winds. And you become a fully sort of mature hurricane with the ability to be really dynamically active in many aspects of your life. But you're also seated, established in experience of composure and calm. So you're not a chicken running around with your head chopped off, just pushing yourself, huffing and puffing and huffing and puffing, driving exhaust into your body, breaking your body down. And then you have to recover from that. You're actually sort of teaching your body how to sustain this activity and build your body up. In a way, it's sort of why ultra marathoners are sort of a unique group, right. Sort of a different slice of the population. And they're not into like, you know, you know, I mean, they're not into breaking themselves down. They get out into the woods and they run and they're, they just, they Just, it's a, it's a meditation, it's a calm, it's a, you know, an Atar Hamara would run 70, 150 miles a day. And they're, when they finished, their blood pressures were lower than when they started or their galvanic skin response, their stress response, heart rates, all lower than when they were started. It wasn't an endurance event, a stress response. Marathon runners, you know, studies, some studies show that when they finish a marathon, they have heart damage similar to someone with a heart attack.

Yeah, I've talked with some ultra runners before and it's like they just got done smoking a fatty. They're just very, very relaxed and kind of zoned individuals.

Exactly.

Yeah. So a big part of that is mindset, huh?

Well, a big part of that is, you know, I think, I think a lot. They're just, like I said, there are different constitutional makeup, but a lot, but a lot of that makeup can be, you know, you. Our mindset is created by what nervous system we activate and what nervous system we activate. Whether it be calming, repair, rejuvenative or fight or flight is determined by how you breathe. When you see a baby nursing, baby's nursing, they're all super calm. They're supposed to be anyway. They're breathing through their nose. A baby crying is breathing through their mouth. Very simple example of the difference between an emergency response that's wired to oh my God, something bad's going to happen versus a nasal. Deep, long, slow breath means tells the nurse. And in Germany the word for nursing is called stillen. Literally means to still your baby.

Interesting. So how do people do it wrong in terms of, you know, when a triathlete or, you know, anybody's out there exercising or, you know, running, Preparing for a 5k or 10k or a marathon or whatever. What are the biggest mistakes that people make when they're breathing?

Well, first of all, most athletes are probably over trained and they go into a race exhausted and depleted. And the nice thing about nasal breathing, when you, you breathe deeply in and deeply out through your nose, sort of a governor. If you have to breathe through your mouth, you know, at that point during your training, you're in an emergency state. Does that mean that I never open my mouth when I'm climbing a hill on my bike or something? No, of course I do, you know, but when I, but you know, the vast majority of my training is with my mouth closed and I'm, I know that I'm, you know, that I'm breathing in a really efficient manner and I can climb the hill if I want with my mouth closed too, but. But it's not a deal breaker to open your mouth, is my point. What's a deal breaker is not being able to breathe efficiently with your mouth closed and actually maintain a somewhat vigorous or at least moderate amount of exercise. Most people, as soon as they close their mouth and they go for a walk up a set of stairs, they're huffing and puffing and gasping. That's a level of. That's a significant lack of respiratory efficiency. That means you're breathing only in the upper chest of your lungs. You're triggering an emergency response, 26,000 breaths per day. You're not exchanging waste out. See, the big deal about breathing, people don't know is that it's the waste removal that's the big deal breaker. Getting the oxygen in, you can get that in with a half of one lobe of your lungs. It's not the issue getting the oxygen in. That's where a lot of scientists will say, oh, that's baloney. That doesn't make any sense. You can breathe fine without all five lobes of your lungs working. And that's true. But you can't breathe out and get rid of the waste that well. And when people are huffing and puffing, going up a hill or whatever, it's the elimination of waste that's the limiting factor. So we're becoming better and more efficient waste removal machines. And I can tell you, I've been in practice for the last 35, 40 years, that it's our inability to move waste out that takes us out at the end of the day. And breathing is a major waste removal channel. And very few folks breathe into all five lobes, Access those alveoli in the lower lobes of your lungs and to make that happen. So what people do wrong is when they try to nose breathe is they just try to close their mouth and breathe through the nose. And they don't try to really establish a long, slow breath in and a long slow breath out and establish a rhythm that allows them to give the air time to get into the lower lobes and the ways to get out. And we just kind of breathe fast through our nose, which is not going to be very effective.

Now, how can we learn to breathe the right way? Are there exercises or drills that you recommend?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, real simple. I mean, you know, one thing you do is you start out, you know, go for your. Go on and get on your exercise, get your bike or treadmill or go for a walk, it doesn't matter what you do. And for the first five or ten minutes, just breathe deeply into your nose, as deeply in and deeply out as you possibly can, you know, perfusing your lower rib cage the best you can. So it's really weird because you're now breathing deep and walking slow and you're like, you're going to realize just how much effort it takes to breathe deep and to push against the ribcage elasticity that wants to clamp down. And you're going to feel like, man, this is hard work breathing. I can't believe it. So that'll be the one first thing you notice when you do that. Long breathing in and long breathing out. Notice that there's a natural rhythm space between each breath, like a linking between the inhale and the exhale. And as you feel and experience that linking between the inhale and exhale, I want you to really tune into that. So for the first five minutes, deep in as you can, deep out as you can, tune into the natural space between each breath. Not a holding, just a natural linking, but there's a space there. Then after five minutes or 10 minutes of that perfusing exercise in your lungs, now we're going to start to go a little faster. So crank the exercise bike up to level 2, 3 or 4 or whatever it is, or elliptical or treadmill or start jogging a little bit. As soon as you start doing that, be very aware of that space between the breath. As soon as you start to go a little faster, like if you were on a treadmill, I'd say increase the elevation by one degree every 15 seconds. So something like that, you can adjust that for whatever you're on. So one degree of elevation every 15 seconds. And every time you do that, keep ask yourself, is the space between my breath the same or is it starting to get a little shorter? Am I breathing the same rhythm as I was in the beginning? Has my breath gotten a little shorter? Have I lost that space between the breath? As soon as you lose that space, you're going in the direction of upper chest emergency response. So at that point you're going to slow down and reset and re establish the long, slow, deep rhythm of the breath. Take the treadmill back down to zero, and maybe you went to 4 degrees and you felt the breath getting a little bit labored. Now you go down to zero, reestablish the original breath. Once that space comes back and you're back in business, then you go back up every one degree, every four set, every 15 seconds again. But this time you don't feel the breath getting short until 8 degrees, right? You're like, wow, that was cool. I just. I just showed that I improved 4 degrees, and I'm breathing the exact same. But then at 8 degrees, you see it break, and then you go back down, reset the breath again. But now you're actually. See when you're at 8 degrees, you're sort of pushing with your nose into those lower lobes of your lungs, and there's ribcage tension, and it's not so happy. And the body's going, I got to open my mouth here soon. And you say, oh, no, no, fine. That's cool. We're not going to do that. We're just going to take it down to zero. And now you can breathe into those lower lobes you were just pushing into a minute ago, where all the good stuff is, all the calming nerves, all the alveoli. And now with that deeper, longer, slower breath that you now establish, that more efficient, deep breath, you then start marching back up one degree every 15 minutes. And now you're pushing 10 or 12 degrees. When you get to the thing, when it gets too steep, you go down to zero. You increase your speed a notch or two, and you reset that. And it's very cool because you can document, literally document your benefit, and you can't deny it. You're like, wow, this is really happening here.

And you really can't just zone out and check out during a workout when you're doing this right, you kind of got to focus a little bit, I would imagine. Now, does it become natural, though? I mean, have you found that you're able to just kind of go out and go for a run or go for a bike ride and find yourself naturally doing this? Or does it always take that intense focus on the nasal breathing?

Truth be told, it's an individual thing. Some people have really screwed up sinuses and deviated septums. And I had a broken nose, so I was not a quick learner either. I was, you know, experimenting with a lot of my partners and friends and stuff, and they were going, wow, this is awesome. I feel great. I'm going, really? You do? And this is many years ago, before I wrote the book, and that book took 10 years to write. Everybody thought I was out of my mind. You know, that was, you know. So it took a long time to. For me to really feel the difference. But now, yeah, I mean, I used to teach a class in North Boulder Park. It was a free class here in Boulder, and anybody could come, and it became sort of like a little Cult class, go check out that weird guy's breathing technique. And then people would come. And one day a fire truck drove up, and the fireman came out with his mask on, his hat on. He came over, and he was a Denver fire guy. And I said, what's going on? He said, I'm here for your breathing class. And I said, what? He goes, yeah, one of our firemen came up last week without the fire truck, and he did your class and learned it. And we had this competition where we see how long a tank could last running up and down hills, because if a tank could last more than 28 minutes, even a minute more than that, save a life or your own life, it's a huge thing. And the record was like 28 or 29 minutes, and this kid did 34 minutes, and the whole fire department was blown away. So the next week, the fire truck drove up. Two weeks later, two fire trucks drove up. Soon I was doing an in service for the entire Denver Fire Department, teaching them how to breathe, because they saw firsthand that that breathing was so efficient that it actually would allow them to stay calm and not use as much oxygen, obviously, out of their tank and have it last a whole lot longer. But the bottom line is that usually average takes about three weeks for most folks to get through the rough water, sometimes using the Breathe Right strips. You know, those breath Right strips you stick on your nose that you see the football players wear, that helps open up your nasal passage by about 30%. So in the beginning, when you're sort of congested and. And that pathway is not facilitated, putting the breeds right give you kind of a leg up so you can get, you know, you get competitive a little bit faster, and then soon you don't need them at all. After a while, your sinuses are open, and it's not a big deal, but they're a great learning tool.

Interesting. It makes sense. Now, where does the concept. Because it sounds like you discovered this whole less is more kind of thing, and then you went on and started to look into Ayurvedic medicine after that point. In terms of what you learned when you started studying Ayurvedic medicine, where does that whole concept tie into this? Because you talk about ayurvedic body types in your book and how that kind of influences the way that we exercise and the choices that we make. Where does all that play in?

Well, what happened to me was as I was competing as a triathlete during chiropractic school, I was also studying Chinese medicine, and I didn't sort of gel with that. I kind of came across something on Ayurvedic medicine and body types and yoga and kind of the whole less is more concept there, you know. You know, one of their main statements in Ayurveda is to first establish silence and then perform action. And I was like, well, that's the runner's high. And I was incredibly like passionate about figuring out what this runner's high was. I wanted that. So I used to read this, you know, the book the Psychic side of Sports books by Murphy and all those guys. Anyway, some old, old books about that I just got so hooked on. I needed to know what this thing was. So here was a system of medicine that really that one of their mission statements was less is more. And I go, I got to know more about that. So then I find out that there's body types and certain body types are really heavy and solid and they're great linemen, but they're not going to be the best sprinters for the most part. You look at certain body types are going to be really fast and great sprinters. Some are going to be really competitive and really driven. And so all of a sudden it became really clear why everybody's going to be better at certain things and not so good at other things. So that got me very excited. We actually created programs for kids in elementary schools to actually select sports according to their body type so they could be tested on stuff that they're good at versus on stuff that they're not good at. Because quite frankly, the President's Council tests people only on one body type, which happens to be the pitta, the fire, the aggressive, the competitive. You know, if you look at ecto versus meso versus endomorphs, you know, the President's Council tests for mesomorphs that kind of medium framed, you know, middle of the road body type. The big heavy guys can't climb the ropes and the thin guys can't throw the ball very far. And it's tough. And half the one, you know, half of the American kids experience their first major failure in life is a sports failure according to a Lewis Harris poll. So that was like bad, right? I mean, that's not cool that these kids are getting blown out of physical fitness class just because of the wrong body type. So, you know, the part of the book was like, this is such a cool concept. You know, you can find something that you're good at and that you love to do and you can reenter, re enter into being physical again, which is important.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So did you find that you fell into a certain ayurvedic body type personally?

Yeah, I was the guy. I was pitta. I have fire so I was competitive. But I was also kapha which is bigger boned. So you know, climbing the ropes definitely wasn't my thing. You know, being a sprinter wasn't my thing. So I was like I could run, swimming, bike, but I wasn't fast any of those. So I, you know, I just found longer races. Right. You know, I was competitive the longer I went.

Now if people wanted to dig into ayurvedic body typing, where's the best place for them to start?

Well, you can go right to my website and there's a free interactive questionnaire. You can just take it.

Really nice.

Yeah. And you can just spit out a whole body type profile for you and everything. It's really neat.

So lifespa.com where it's there.

Yep. Lifespy.com is just going to the body type questionnaire. There's a whole bunch of quizzes there. And one of the major quizzes is the body type. And then of course it's in the the body mind sport book too. And we also give them guides in the book towards what sport might be best for their type as well.

Yeah, I think that's interesting. I actually wrote a book on somatotyping.

Oh cool.

It's kind of like a book for the general fitness population but it's called get fit guys guide to achieving your ideal body. And it also has a body typing quiz in it. And that was one of the hardest parts was creating a quiz that that worked quantitatively and qualitatively to be able to type folks. So I'm pulling up the link to your quiz now and I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes for folks so they can go and look into this concept of ayurvedic typing and they might get lost on your website because you have a ton of really, really fantastic information over there. But just a couple follow ups that I wanted to ask you while I have you on the call. One would be are you familiar with this new book called Running on the Revol Way to run better. It's a new book out from Runner's World and it focuses on tempo breathing, like taking three breaths in and then two breaths out and trying to not breathe out so much on the foot strikes that you don't get side stitches and that type of thing. Have you seen this book at all?

No, I haven't seen it.

Are you familiar with the concept of tempo breathing or breathing X number of counts in and X number of counts out?

Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, of course, that's been bantered around for many, many years. And one of the techniques we even talk about is to count your breath and see how many counts you deal. One, two, three in, one, two, three out. And we encourage people to, in the beginning, learn how to make them as long as possible. And as you become a more efficient breather, you take longer breath in because it takes longer for it to get into the lower lobes and longer for it to get out. That's the number one reason. Excuse me. Number one reason people get side stitches is because their diaphragm contracts and goes into a spasm. And the only reason why that would really happen on any regular basis is because you're not breathing into the lower lobes of your lungs and the diaphragm is not fully contracting and fully relaxing. But once that diaphragm, and this is so important for so many things, because guess what's right? Underneath your diaphragm is your stomach and your liver and all your digestive organs. So if your diaphragm isn't contracting in the way, you know, you've heard of things like heartburn and hiatal hernias. Those are all the stomach sticking to the bottom of the diaphragmatic wall. So if your diaphragm isn't contracting, not only do you not breathe good and not only do you not, you know, you get more side aches and things like that. I used to get sideaches all the time. And it sounds crazy to you to say this, but I can't even. I really can't remember the last time I went for a run, I had a sideache. I just can't remember. But when I was young, years ago, and starting running, and that was just such a regular thing, getting a sideache. And it's just a diaphragmatic spasm which completely goes away if you use your nose. Your nose is a breathing device. We are. When I first wrote my book, humans were called obligate nose breathers, which means we are obligated to breathe through our nose animals. Horses are obligate nose breathers. They can't breathe through their mouth. They breathe only through their nose. Of course, some of the best runners in the world, and. But now I think they change to be preferred nose breathers or something like that. But the point is that babies and infants are really nasal breathing creatures, and we Learn how to breathe through our mouth as a result of stress. And the nose has turbinates, or turbines, literally, that are engineered to drive the air all the way down into the lower lobes of your lungs. If you look at the way the engine of a car was designed years ago, so this piston would shunt the air into the valve, would let the air into the chamber, and it always exploded in the same place. And engines didn't last very long, so they created a valve that made it spin a little, spun the air a little bit like the beginning of a turbocharger, and spun the air all throughout the chamber and mixed it up so it always now and the engines last 200,000 miles. Now, that's exactly what the nose is. The nose is the turbinate that spins the air, thins the air, rarefies the air, and drives it all the way into the lower, lower, where all the blood is and all the calming nerves are. That is a really cool thing to know because once you get to breathing there, you get those benefits.

Wow. And, you know, the nose is a filter, too, right?

It's a weatherizer. It filters, warms, moistens. It does all that as well, for sure.

Interesting.

But that's like the only thing you're going to read about is it warms and filters. To me, that's like, yeah, it does that. It's great. But it's like, that's like the, you know, one of the last things to me that's important that it does.

Just the beginning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I would encourage folks not only to begin experimenting with this concept of nasal breathing, I mean, if you're listening in right now and you're out, you know, as I know a lot of our listeners are when they're listening to this podcast, biking or running, probably not swimming, but biking or running or working out, try this nasal breathing concept and just see how you feel when you do it. And of course, in John's book, he also gets into things like how this is going to affect your alpha brainwaves versus your kind of stressed out beta brainwaves. And he delves into this in much greater detail. So I'd also encourage you to head over to the show Notes for this episode@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and read John's book. It's really good. As most folks who listen to this podcast know, I read a lot of books. Some of them get bad reviews, and some of them I do like, like. So I do recommend that you read John's book and check out lifespa. Com if you're in the Boulder area, this would probably be a cool place for you to stop by too and check out. John, thanks for coming on the call and sharing this with us today.

Awesome. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.