Brian Johnson explains why breathing is foundational to health and performance and gives practical, daily guidance to improve it. Core claims: oxygen is cellular fuel; many people over-breathe (often via the mouth), which reduces oxygen delivery to tissues; nasal, diaphragmatic, slow/coherent breathing (nose → belly → exhale longer) improves autonomic balance (parasympathetic activation), detoxification (claim: ~70% via breath), and performance (sports, stress resilience). Practical recommendations include nasal breathing all day (including taped mouth during sleep), diaphragm training, daily dedicated practice (meditation/breath training), micro-moments during the day, and exploring an individualized resonant breathing rate (≈3.5–6 breaths/minute; example pattern: inhale 6s, hold 1s, exhale 8s). Episode ends with links to Optimize/Optimize Coach and a free trial offer.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.
Hey, this is Brian sitting here wrapping up my AM1 deep work time block before I hit the studio to film the breathe session. We have seven fundamentals, as we discussed yesterday. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating, and prospering. Each gets its own session in our mastery series, which is the cornerstone of our coach program. I'll probably walk you through that on a high level soon. But for today, what's one little thing we can think about today? Well, if I was going to boil down breathing into the simplest components, I'll give you a quick little overview here. First, you need to know that oxygen is cell fuel. All healthy cells need oxygen in order to function. The breathing experts tell us this is actually the most fundamental, fundamental. You can survive for weeks on food, days without food, days without water, but only minutes without oxygen. I should also note that not all cells require oxygen. You know what cells don't? Cancer cells. Whole nother conversation. So then we get into, well, what's going on here? You know, we're not, we're not breathing properly as a culture. We're in fact over breathing. Just like you can overeat. Surprisingly, you could over breathe. And the issue isn't getting more oxygen into your body. The issue is getting that oxygen from your hemoglobin, which has a billion molecules of oxygen, getting that oxygen into your tissues and cells, which paradoxically requires us to focus on our carbon dioxide. Most of us over breathe. Why? Because we breathe through our mouths. Which comes to leads us to rule number 1, 2 and 3 of optimal breathing through your nose all day, every day. The only time the ancient ancestor versions of us breathe through their mouths was in an emergency situation. Now we breathe through our mouths almost all day, every day, which creates a fight or flight state. Sympathetic nervous system response not optimal. Breathe through your nose. We'll talk about how and why and all that. But long story short, close your lips, put your tongue up on what Patrick McGowan calls the magic spot, which is how we teach our kids how to breathe, which is that space right before, gently, right before your teeth, that top of your mouth there, roof of your mouth, magic spot. Close your nose, breathe in, close your lips, breathe in through your nose, down into your belly. Most people breathe into their mouths, breath do you shallowly into their chest. And they're not getting enough of the oxygen out of the hemoglobin into their cells and they feel less than awesome. So you breathe in through your nose, down into your belly. Rule number Two, your number one most under appreciated muscle in your body is your diaphragm. We need to work it out. We'll teach you how. But for now, nose, belly. Simply breathing through your nose brings it deeper in. We want to do it calmly, gently, rhythmically. Then we exhale. There's our little dog, Zeus. Everybody's getting up. We got a party here. Then we exhale. Rule number three, we exhale and we finish strong exhaling slightly longer than our inhale. That's how we flip the switch to our parasympathetic nervous system and know that you actually detox. 70% of your detoxification comes through your breath, only 30% through sweat and elimination. Super important to breathe properly if you want to get yourself detoxed. So when do we do this? Nose, belly, exhale. All day, every day. We're going to encourage you to train your nasal breathing while you sleep. I use some tape over my mouth, which sounds ridiculous and it kind of is, but it's also remarkably effective at making sure you're breathing through your nose. Longer chat. Then when you're training, you want to breathe exclusively through your nose. Ouch, that hurt when I started doing that. And you want to deliberately practice breathing properly. Every single day I start my meditation. I do two sets of basically 11 minutes. First I train my breath, then I do some virtue meditation. Then we want to find micro moments throughout the day to practice our breathing. Oscillate on, off. Don't go to Instagram, don't go to your email, don't go to your smartphone for the latest news. Take a breathing break, talk about the power of that, literally extending your telomeres, strengthening that, etc. Then we're going to talk about what's your count? There's something called a resonant rate and a coherent breathing pattern which can literally 10x your HRV your heart rate variability, which is one of the greatest predictors of your well being. We like to call it energized tranquility, which is really what we're training here is your ability to flip the switch, get calm, get confident, etc. That rate varies from three and a half breaths per minute to six. We coach our coaches on how to discover that. Minus six, one, eight, inhale for six, hold for one, exhale for eight. Tell you what, in the class, we're going to take 11 deep breaths throughout it, so why don't we take a deep breath together right now if you feel so inspired, relax, shake out your body, sit up nice and straight, which is very important. By the way, posture. To make sure your diaphragm has room to work, inhale through your nose gently, calmly, rhythmically down into your belly. You're relaxed. Back out through your nose, which creates more pressure exhaling slightly longer than your inhale. Let's do one more. I don't know about you, but every time I do one breath, I'm like, what? That's amazing. What we just did was we took a vagus getaway. Not Las Vegas, but your vagal nerve. Vagus nerve. It's your 12th cranial nerve. It is how you cultivate self mastery. This is what all of the elite performers, Navy Seals, all the elite athletes we admire that are taught. Emotional control via breath control. It's amazing what you can do when you learn how to flip that switch and trigger your relaxation response, et cetera, calm, confidence, focus, etc. Then we're going to talk about four S's, Superman, Spartans, sports and screens. Very briefly, look at the difference between Clark, Ken and Superman. What do you see? You see a difference in posture. Posture is really important to breathe properly. If you're not standing up, nice and strong. Power pose style. Rather than hunching over, you literally improve your breathing by 30% by not squeezing your diaphragm. By hunching over. We'll talk about that. We'll also talk about something called oral posture. Sounds ridiculous, but it's powerful. Which actually we already talked about the magic spot. Spartans. Did you know ancient Spartan warriors, as they were training their young Spartan warriors, they would have to race barefoot 10 miles with water in their mouth. At the end of that, they had to spit the water out to train themselves to breathe exclusively through their nose. Why? They knew back in the day that's how you perform at an elite level. Boom. And again, the self mastery, control, etc. Now, whereas I love Spartan races, but you go to a Spartan race, look around, you're going to see gaping mouths wide open. Not effective. Which leads us to sports. The number one untapped potential opportunity for a competitive edge. Learn how to breathe. Equally trained athletes, one who trains his breath or her breath, the other who does not. The one who's mastered the breath will absolutely dominate because cells are fueled by oxygen. You want to be at your peak performance, get good at this. So there's a huge opportunity there. Then screens. When you're looking at screens, be careful you're not holding your breath. They call that screen apnea. And then finally, that comes to optimized breathing. Our big three times three. We need to know how to breathe, nose, belly, exhale, when to breathe, right? Sleeping, training, micro moments and then we need to breathe that way. Now, one, two, three. We know how. We check to see if we are and then we go do it right now. Then of course we coach our coaches to write themselves a prescription of what you're going to do to change your life today.
How about you?
You get anything out of this? You breathing through your mouth, breathing through your nose? I'll tell you what, I've done a lot of things over the last 20 years. Optimizing my breath might be literally without exaggeration, the most life changing thing. So there you go. More soon. Hope you're doing great. Make today an awesome day. Hey guys, this is Brian.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.
Hi, this is Brian.
Hope you enjoyed that. Number one quick note. If you want to go deeper into Optymyze, check us out at Optymyze, the team has set up a free two week trial where you can get instant access to all 600 plus philosophers notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, et cetera and 50 optimal living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course the thousand plus optimize plus ones. And then if you want to go all in, check out Optimize. Coach, Optimize me for the free trial, for the core wisdom Optimize Me coach if you want to go all in and master yourself, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Have a great day, see you tomorrow.
