Are you a bad breather? Would you like to increase the amount of oxygen in your body
naturally? If so, why don't we just breathe really fast and really deeply like this?
You've probably seen people doing this online, right?
But wait a minute, I'm getting a little bit dizzy. If I keep doing this, sometimes I get a headache.
In fact, one time I did it so much I even fainted, I passed out. But how does that work? If I'm
breathing fast and I'm breathing deep I'm bringing in more oxygen. But why is oxygen getting cut off
to my brain? Are you confused yet? If so, you are not alone. The world of yoga breathing is very,
very confusing and in this video we'll talk about number one, why your blood oxygen levels right
now they're probably just fine and you don't need more. Number two, what you probably do need more
of is actually carbon dioxide, this is taught to us by the Bohr effect. And number three,
we'll look at rather than focusing on over-breathing or hyperventilation,
we'll talk about optimizing your breathing, and we'll take a look at a couple of exercises you
probably haven't seen before to increase your respiratory efficiency, strengthen coordination
of your diaphragm, and then some flexibility exercises for your thoracic region. Hey,
my name is Lucas I am a breathing coach and a yoga teacher. I have a TEDx talk on breathing you
might have seen from a few years back. I have been teaching both students and coaches/professionals
since 2007 and I find that the vast majority of the world is confused about breathing. Everyone's
focused on oxygen and they're missing the point of oxygen exchange and CO2 balance. That's what we'll
talk about today. A quick disclaimer - this is for educational purposes only. If you have asthma,
COPD, emphysema, please go see a doctor. There is a PDF down below with a summary of everything
that we'll chat about, including the exercises, feel free to grab that in the description. OK,
so hyperventilation, why doesn't that bring more oxygen into my body? Well,
it certainly brings more oxygen into my lungs and it certainly brings oxygen to my blood,
but that's not the same as getting it to the cellular level. Here's the way it works. There's
something called the Bohr effect, which was discovered by a researcher named Christian
Bohr over a hundred years ago in in Denmark. What he discovered is that when oxygen comes in it is
bound to hemoglobin, it's called oxyhemoglobin or HbO2, and essentially, these hemoglobin molecules,
they hold on to the oxygen and it's transported around and that's all fine. However, in the
absence of carbon dioxide it's very difficult for your cells in the body to access that oxygen. So,
you've got a whole bunch of oxygen that your body can't get access to and so that's why
plenty of oxygen and yet I'm getting a headache, plenty of oxygen and yet my brain gets oxygen
deprived, and I might even faint. The goal of almost everything, including breathing, in health
is balance, trying to find the appropriate balance between sleep and wakefulness, between work and
rest, between oxygen and CO2. Let's talk more about CO2. If we were to go out on the street and
ask a hundred people "How are your oxygen levels?" I find that most people assume that their oxygen
is really low. They assume that they're starving for air like they're on the top of Mount Everest
and they just need more. This is not true. And the reason that I know that is because with a simple
twenty dollar device you can buy online, this is a medical device, it's called a pulse oximeter,
you will find that almost everyone, unless they have disease, or illness, or suffering
from some kind of respiratory challenge, a medical condition, they have 95 to 99 percent saturation
in their blood, which essentially is like a full tank. Let's imagine you're filling
up your car with gas at the gas station and your thing reads full, your gas meter reads full but
you just keep pumping. More gas is not more gas, it just drips out all over the floor. More oxygen
is not more oxygen. My gas tank is full, I'm at 98 percent, I don't need more oxygen. What
I need is to optimize my respiratory system so that I'm able to absorb the oxygen that I have,
not get light-headed and dizzy. Now, that same group of people who have a full tank of oxygen,
they also are doing something that is problematic and that is that they're over-breathing. Now
they're not breathing that fast, however most people are breathing about 20 or 30 percent faster
than they should. Ideally, we'd like to breathe around 12, 15, 16 breaths per minute. Everybody's
a little bit different and most people breathe faster than that. That faster breathing lowers
our CO2 and this leads to an imbalance where we're unable to access the oxygen that we already have,
it's trapped with that hemoglobin. When we look at most breathing exercises, when we look at most
serious practitioners of breath work, the majority of their breathing practices focus on this balance
of oxygen and CO2, which usually comes down to slowing down their breath, normalizing their
breathing patterns. The second thing we need to focus on is our respiratory efficiency,
breathing better. From a muscular perspective, your diaphragm is the biggest muscle involved
in breathing, so let's strengthen and coordinate it. From a posture perspective, if you're hunched
over and you have tightness in your chest and shoulders, this can also limit your ability
to breathe efficiently. I'd like to show you a couple of exercises you probably haven't seen
before. The first one is designed to strengthen and coordinate your diaphragm and the second one
is designed to free up your thoracic cavity, so you can breathe more efficiently. Let's take a
look. The first breathing exercise we'll do is a resistance 4x4 breathing pattern. The 4x4 refers
to our inhale to the count of four, and exhale to the count of four, and our target rate is four to
six breaths per minute. As we mentioned before, our optimal, normal, walking around, sitting at a
cafe breathing rate, is maybe 12 or 15, 16 breaths per minute. We'll deliberately cut that in half to
train our body to slow down and optimize O2 and CO2 balance. As you probably guessed, when we
slow down our CO2 goes up but our oxygen levels don't really change very much at all. We still
have that full tank of gas, 95 to 99 percent. For this practice it's helpful if you have a
resistance device. Now, I have this device which you can buy online, they cost about ten dollars.
I find to gamify the breathing it provides some resistance which
helps to train my diaphragm. However, there are simpler devices like this one
or even a reusable straw, like an aluminium straw, that you might have in your kitchen,
it'll provide a little bit of resistance. Why do we want resistance? Well, think about resistance
training. Your diaphragm, your main breathing muscle, is a skeletal muscle, just like your
biceps, and when you load it with resistance, in this case by restricting our inhale,
it helps to build the muscle strength number one and coordination, neuromuscular connection,
and it's a very, very effective way to go. We'll do 10 rounds and we'll inhale through our device,
through our device or through our straw, to the count of four, and then we'll exhale
through our nose to the count of four. Try to make the breath round, so the inhale
and the exhale have an equal rate and an equal volume. It's a little bit challenging at first,
but you'll get the hang of it. Let's start together.
Again, remember, the device doesn't matter. I like this one because it's a bit of a game. A
simple restricted breathing device or even a simple straw from your kitchen can be really,
really effective. We just want to add a little bit of resistance so that our diaphragm muscle has to
work a little harder. Remember, our goal is a 4x4 count, targeting four to six breaths per minute.
Let's look at one more exercise. This is a stretching exercise designed to open up our
intercostal muscles, our chest and our shoulders, since many of us are constricted here. This can
actually impair your breathing physiology. Now that we've done a breathing exercise, I'd like to
share with you a flexibility exercise specifically to work on our thoracic region, our intercostal
muscles, the muscles between your ribs, and also the muscles of our chest and shoulders, which very
often restrict breathing and they can reduce our breathing efficiency. This is a simple pose but
it works great. We'll do a two minute hold. I have a timer here, I have a block. If you don't
have a block, a book can work. I would encourage you to use something hard, it will work better.
On top of that I will put a pillow, you can use a folded up towel, that'll work just fine as well,
and I'll rest my scapula, my shoulder blades here - so not my lower back, but way up higher. Lastly,
I have a broomstick here and this allows me to flex my shoulders, extending my arms above my
head. I'll position myself so that the edge of the block creates a leverage point, drop my head back,
extend my arms back, close my eyes, and I'll breathe here in and out through my nose.
My objective here is to free up my thoracic cavity so that I'm able to make the most of what I have.
As we spoke about before, so often we feel like we need more oxygen but in most cases what we need to
do is make the most of what we have, optimize our breathing, and absorb the oxygen that's already
there. In this case we're working to improve our posture and free up our respiratory efficiency.
Good,
bend your
elbows and carefully, with your head coming up last, make your way up to
a seated position. Hope you found this video helpful. Just to summarize what we talked about,
with breathing exercises often, rather than trying to pump up our oxygen,
which is often already high, we're usually trying to boost our CO2 to balance out our
gas exchange. We talked about the importance of building the strength and coordination of your
diaphragm and potentially opening up this region of the body so we can breathe in a way that's the
most efficient. The name of the game is making the most of what you already have, lots of oxygen, a
really great breathing system. If you'd like more educational videos on yoga, science-based videos,
hit subscribe down below. If you have experiences with any of these practices, I'd love to hear
from you in the comments down below. For my other yoga breathing teaching videos you can always find
my calendar at yogabody.com. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you in the next video.