PNTV: The Power of Your Breath by Anders Olsson

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, the Power of youf Breath by Anders Olsson, the Power of youf the Secret Key to Reshaping youg Looks, Body, Health and Weight. Anders Olson is one of the world's leading thinkers on breathing and teachers and practitioners of the art and science of breathing. We actually talked about him briefly in our PNTV on James Nestor's great book Breath, in which we discussed the fact that Anders and James did an experiment together. They went to Stanford. They had a surgeon plug up their nasal passages such that they couldn't breathe through their nose for 10 days. They wanted to see what were the effects of mouth breathing. Spoiler alert. It was terrible. They said the anxiety, the irritation, the fatigue, etc. That came from breathing through their mouths was horrible. They couldn't wait to get the stuff out of their nose so they could breathe properly, AKA through their noses. So I'm a huge fan of breathing, as you know, if you've been following along. I'm a huge fan of breathing. Aren't we all? But I'm a huge fan of doing it. Right. We're going to talk about why it's important and how to do it. Should it be easy to breathe? Right? Yeah, of course. It should be easy to eat. Right. It should be easy to move. Right. It should be easy to focus our minds. Right. But you know what? Modern society, for all of its amazing benefits and improvements, isn't helping us with the basic fundamentals. So we got to revisit this theme again and again. Now we have a broad collection of notes on some of the pretty near complete collection of notes on the best books on breathing. Check it out. At Optimize Me Breathing, we also have a class, optimal breathing 101. And then we go deeper into it in our Optimized Mastery series for our coaches and really move from theory to practice to mastery. And it's funny because I joined one of our coaches, have like, zoom meetup groups, like virtual meetups, right? And I got invited to join one. Thank you again, Khaled and Asma. I went there, there's a couple dozen optimizers, and we connected and it was awesome. And at the end, we took a little screen grab, right, to capture the moment. And I printed it out because I love to capture these moments and connect the work I do in the studio as a hermit with people whose lives matter to me and who are being impacted by our work. We talked about this in Life's Great question. Make the connection between the work you do and the people you're serving super important. So I do that all the time. I cherish all the little notes, comments. I print them out often, put them on my desk and look at them. So long story a little shorter. I printed out this screen grab of our coaches and Emerson saw it coming out of the printer and he brought it to me and we looked at it together and I said, hey buddy, you notice anything about this picture? And he said, yeah, they're all wearing optimized T shirts, right? Because they were the ones who had been through optimized coach class one were wearing the shirts they got at graduation weekend. Right. We did a spartan race together. They got a T shirt and they were wearing it optimized T shirt as they came together. And then there were some others in the group who were just wearing a plain blue T shirt. They were in coach class two. Right. We're now in coach class three. You can sign up for coach class four, which starts on January 1st. Optimize me coach. But I'm looking at the picture and I say, yeah, you're right, they do all have optimized T shirts on, except for these people who aren't quite graduating yet. But you notice anything else? He looks more closely and he saw what I saw, which is every single one of them had their mouths shut, their lips were closed, which we're going to talk about in breathing posture. That's a very important thing. They were breathing through their noses. And he said, yeah, they all have their mouths shut. They're breathing through the noses. I said, that's exactly right. Why do you think they're doing that? And he says in his almost 7 year old, almost 8 year old way, because they want to live longer. Because they want to be healthy. Exactly, buddy. Theory to practice, to mastery. For the win. Go optimize coaches. So why is it important to breathe properly? Well, let's remind ourselves, actually, let's take a breath right now, then we'll remind ourselves. In through your nose. We're going to talk about proper breathing. 1, 2, 3. In through your nose, always down into your belly. Your diaphragm. Always exhale slightly longer than your inhale. The fastest way to slip your switch, your parasympathetic nervous system, your relaxation response. Let's take a breath together now. One breath. It's always so amazing. I did a video, a number one video where I put my pulse oximeter on my finger. My Pulse was at 70 or something because I'd just done some Burpees. I was excited talking. It's probably where it is right now. And in one breath, dropped. Boom, 10 beats. If we wanted to do a few more breaths, boom, we can drop it more. A deep, relaxing. We'll talk about the parameters. In through your nose, down into your belly. Exhale slightly longer. The fastest way to slow yourself down, calm your nervous system, etc. So why is breathing so important? Well, again, we can live for weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without oxygen. It's a core fundamental. Every single cell, the trillions of cells in your body, need oxygen to function. The only cells in your body basically, that don't need oxygen to function, can you guess what they are? All healthy cells need oxygen. Can you guess what cells don't need oxygen to function? And replicate? Cancer cells, they're anaerobic. Oxygen is important. We need oxygen. Healthy cells need oxygen. Breathing properly is super important. And then breathing accounts for 70% of your detoxification, sweating and elimination. Only 30%, 70% of your detoxification comes from your breath. Which is why James Nestor says, and all the great teachers, you can eat all the organic food you want. You can do X, Y and Z. But if you aren't breathing properly, good luck. This is a fundamental skill. That's why we need to learn how to. Now, James has a big five, and I like to think of it as a big three, to boil it down. But with his big five, we can do a big three times two. And I should also say that Patrick McGown the oxygen advantage is another one of my favorite books, which I absolutely love. And Patrick has been one of my deepest inspirations. He's coached me personally a number of times. He's joined our luminary guest faculty with our optimized coach program. And that one session literally changed people's lives. Just learning how to breathe properly, people with asthma who struggle with running, simply getting this basic stuff right is where it's at. So he tells us there are five things in through your nose. We all agree on that. Down into your belly, agree on that as well. And then he says, you want to relax and slowly breathe so it's not quickly. It's nice and slow and relaxed. Then he says, you want to be rhythmic. Everything in nature is rhythmic. And then he says, you want to be quiet. If you can hear yourself breathing too loud and you want to reduce your breathing volume, all that's great. But I'm going to Repeat our big three here. These are the basic 80, 20 fundamentals in through your nose. Always. The only time we used to breathe through our mouth was when we were in the most extreme fight or flight situation. Now it's all day, every day, and we suffer the consequences of a sympathetic nervous system overtaxed. The simplest way to flip the switch to your parasympathetic and to go on to off and relax is breathing through your nose, down into your belly, and then you exhale slightly longer than your inhale. Now, Anders didn't include this in his top five, although he talked about it a lot, about the importance of extending your exhale. And he also tells us exhale through your nose, which is interesting. So I'm going to read the little passage there. People often ask, as I take another nice little breath, should I exhale through my. Okay, I breathe in through my nose. Should I exhale through my mouth or through my nose? Now, again, there's different practices that you can choose to follow, but the general principle that I follow, that I love how Anders described it, compared to breathing out through your mouth, exhaling through your nose increases the pressure in your lungs, which provides better oxygenation. End of discussion for me. So in terms of my own personal practice, nose, belly, exhale. Then we can add quiet, slow, rhythmic, and then we've got our big three times two. But this big three is huge. That's a very quick tutorial on how to breathe, then breathing posture. We talked about this in our note or PNTV on James Nestor's breath as well. If your posture is bad, which most people's posture is bad, right. We're kind of in a S shape. We're sitting down in a chair that somehow captured did I disappear sitting down in a chair as an S shape. And we're looking at this little small tablet. You know what happens when you do that? You restrict your diaphragm, so you actually can't breathe into your belly. You can only breathe shallowly and ineffectually. So we want to have the right posture again. Pull the thread through your head, lengthen and widen your spine, chest up, chin down when you're sitting, when you're standing, when you're walking, strike that power pose Clark Kent to Superman transformation, and boom. You've activated your best self. We call that high optimist flipping the switch. And you've also given your opportunity to breathe, given yourself an opportunity to breathe properly. Now your diaphragm can do its thing. You. You can breathe down deeply. That you can't do here. It's important. And then the other thing to think about is where you Put your old lips and your tongue. So look around you. You'll see a lot of people just during the day. Gaping mouths in their S shape. Gaping mouths. Another way James Nestor said was be like a Greek statue, a J rather than an S. Right? And then close your mouth. If you close your mouth, guess what? You can't breathe through your mouth, which is why. Lips closed. Magic spot is how we describe with Emerson, based on Patrick McGowan's kids book, Always Breathe Correctly. Highly recommended. Little wizard teaches you to find the magic spot in your mouth. Put your tongue up on the roof of your mouth and then approach the front teeth. Don't quite touch them, but right up there is your magic spot. Touch it, close your lips, sit, stand, walk tall. Boom. That's our ideal breathing posture. Practice it all day and all night. Which leads us to your sleep. Most people aren't breathing properly in their sleep. He talks about the issues of being overweight and how that also reduces the flow of oxygen in unhealthy ways. So another reason to get your weight right is that's going to help you get your breathing right. So if you do struggle with your weight, you almost certainly struggle with your sleep. So we want to deal with these things systemically. And this is another reason why optimizing our weight is so important. And that's primarily done again via our nutrition. Check out all the stuff on that. So at night, anders echoes Patrick McGowan's wisdom. Taping your mouth. I use some 3M surgical tape. I've used it for years. I have not missed one night in years since simple little thing. Boom. Rip off the tape, put it on my lips. Emerson uses it, Mommy uses it. Eleanor is starting to use it, although she's still too young to use it all the time. Right? Asterisks. Don't use it if you're drinking or you have serious breathing issues or whatever, but otherwise experiment with it. It's a great way to make sure you're breathing properly at night. If you snore. If you wake up with a dry mouth, you're breathing through your mouth almost certainly. And again, we want to stop doing that. It's triggering fight or flight. We want to get relaxed. Your sleep matters. He also has some great wisdom that we reflect on in the note. On the fact that if you are blowing up your brain all day with input, input, input, input, input, and you're redlining at the top, and you never give yourself to come down and relax. Time to come down and relax. Of course your mind's going to Race at night. Of course you're going to wake up at 2am or 3am Whoa, what's going on? Your mind's still digesting all those inputs. If you want to sleep well at night, which is a very high priority a la why We Sleep. The second PNTV we did in our return series here, Sleep is huge. So we need to oscillate and really restrict digital minimalism style. To go to Cal Newport's book that we also covered, Restrict our technology, use it wisely. It's a great tool. But. But don't use it addictively and obsessively. Otherwise you're going to have a tough time sleeping. Which leads us to the fifth and final idea, which is the Hero's journey again. Now, I love reading these books because I love reading these books and pulling out the wisdom. But often the most powerful wisdom is the author's own story. There's a lot of people that we can take for granted who had to give up a lot to do the work that they do. And they had to take a lot of courageous, heroic risks to do what they do. And Anders tells his story of he just knew that he was called to study breathing and optimize his own breathing and then share what he learned that so radically changed his life with as many people as he could. So he dedicated himself to this. And he ran a workshop, right, with a colleague of his. You know how many people showed up to this workshop he was so excited to produce? What would you guess? One person. One person. What did he say? He said, that's fine. I know this is what I'm supposed to do. Second event. How many people showed up? Two people. Kept on going. Kept on going. He sold his house to finance his continued study and his continued development of his craft and of his business so he can get to a point where he now has hundreds of people at each of his events and he's thriving as a breath teacher. But it was a hero's journey for him. And again, it's easy to take those things for granted, but we need to take them as granted, celebrate the teacher both for their wisdom and for their exemplary, heroic, creative engagement in their own entrepreneurial pursuits. And then decide, what are we here to do? Are we going to have the courage to move past the veil of the known, as Joseph Campbell tells us in A Hero with a Thousand Faces, Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and being grounded about it. I'm not suggesting you go fly away into manicville. Ground it right. Barbara Fredrickson Love 2.0 positivity. You can be too positive. We're not looking for that. Have levity and have gravity. Then she says you have what she calls buoyancy. I say be inspired and be grounded. Then you have calm confidence and then also be anti fragile about it. So you want to be simultaneously. This is a Nassim Taleb idea. Simultaneously super conservative. Know exactly what could go wrong, what the bills are that you need to pay, etc. Right. And find ways to make that work in a way that works for you in a conservative perspective. And at the same time, be super aggressive. Hold these big dreams of I think I can do this and. And you're simultaneously super conservative. I got to make sure I make this much or I've got to have to sell the house in order to do this. Simultaneously conservative and aggressive. That's what he calls his barbell strategy. To be anti fragile and then to extend that one step further. You want multiple options. You don't want one thing that has to work for you to succeed in your creative endeavors. Right. That's fragile. You don't even want two things. You want an infinite array of things that you can do. Optionality. Nassim Taleb calls it the hope. Scientists call it pathways. You have a target, you have agency, and you're willing to take multiple pathways. Hero's journey. How is yours looking? Let's get on it today and celebrate those who are going for it. As we get our sleep dialed, we get our breathing posture dialed. Check in on your posture throughout the day. Know how to breathe. 1, 2, 3, repeat all day, every day. Why breathing is kind of important, I didn't mention, but breathing, optimizing my breathing. I had done a lot of things in my life, from meditation to optimizing my diet, getting rid of some inflammatory stuff for me, grains, etc. That calm my mind. But I still had a baseline of anxiety because that's just how I was growing up. Super anxious kid. Throughout my life, meditation helped quite a bit, but didn't take care of all of it. Nutrition helped even more. Shockingly. Dropped me down when I removed some of the stuff that didn't work, but it was breathing. And I do a breathing practice in my meditation, but it was the breathing and really mastering this that just dropped me down to a whole new level of calm, confidence, energized tranquility where I could flip the switch and boom, oscillate the way I talk about here, that energized tranquility, which again is a big theme of our work in these discussions. In the optimized community in general and optimized coach program, etc. But breathing is big. Hope you enjoyed. What's the one thing you got out of it? How can you make it a more practical part of your life today? Get on that one breath at a time. See you tomorrow.