Your instruction manual for the remote control of the body and mind.

5-minute read

Happy Friday, friend!

Last week we kicked off a 6-week dive into the human nervous system, why it matters and how to train it to boost physical, mental and overall health. If you missed last week’s newsletter, you can find it here.

This week’s week #1 of the five key tools for re-learning and re-engaging your nervous system. You’ll get to grips with what it takes for it to work for you as your genius nature intended, rather than against you in contributing to issues like anxiety and irritability, sleeplessness, panic disorder and fatigue, brain fog, distractibility and persistent indigestion and acid reflux.

Yes, this newsletter’s about performance, but let’s be clear. Wellness comes first.

Performance without wellness is, at best, a bandaid over a bullet-hole.

It might work for a (very) short window of time, but you’re ultimately just A) hiding the source of the issue, and B) causing a build-up of pressure/lack of care that compounds to make things much worse over the long term.

So, foundations. And we’re starting at the core, the epicenter of human thriving and potential, the breath. The breath is the remote control of the body and mind. It can speed things up, slow them down AND hit the pause button. And the best part? You can NEVER lose it! You can forget you have it, sure, but you can never misplace it.

For millennia, the breath has been synonymous with life, the key to the soul, spirit and connection with the greater self and a deep universal energy.

The English word ‘spirit’ comes from the Latin ‘Spiritus’, meaning “a breath”.

In ancient Greek, the word pneuma (think pneumonia - an infection of the lungs) translates to air/breath, and was also used as spirit, or life energy.

The word for air and breath in Chinese medicine is Chi, which also means “universal and cosmic energy of life.”

In Indian philosophy, the word Prana translates to “air and breath”, and also means “sacred essence of life.”

In countless other languages and dialects from Amazonian Quechua to Tibetan to Aramaic, breath has meant life, spirit, and soul. It’s only in the past few hundred years, in the west specifically, that we’ve become disconnected from what is a primal key to abundant health and performance. Ok, geek-out over.

So let’s start at the start…of the breath. The inhale. And the most efficient piece of breathing apparatus ever designed. Your nose.

Note - Your mouth IS NOT for breathing. It’s for eating and talking.

Your nose is specifically designed for breathing. It warms, humidifies and cleans the air we breathe, and precisely regulates the amount of air you breathe in, ensuring you don’t over-breathe and end up in a persistent panic.

Outside of maximum effort sprints/exercises, nasal breathing should be the predominant mechanism for ALL breathing. Sleeping, walking, running, etc.

I personally tape my mouth (3M Micropore Paper Tape) at night. I was snoring and I’d grind my teeth badly when sleeping on my back. I noticed I was waking up with a dry mouth, aching jaw/neck and crazy brain fog.

I heard about mouth taping from James Nestor’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast, tried it out, and every symptom, including the morning brain fog, disappeared, not to mention reduced resting heart rate and blood pressure.

Something I find fascinating, is that committing to nasal breathing when running/walking, naturally limits you to a pace that equates to something called the Zone 2 heart rate range. Zone 2 will be between 70-80% of your max HR, a pace you’ll just about be able to maintain a conversation at.

Zone 2 is not only the most efficient HR range for fat loss, but it’s also the most impactful for improving cardiac function and health.

So, quite literally, limiting yourself to moving within the bounds of your primal nature (i.e. nasal breathing), puts you in THE best position to improve your health and longevity in massive ways. It’s almost like the body knows what it’s doing.

The trail of breath-crumbs continues.

Nasal breathing automatically activates the diaphragm, the dome shaped muscle that sits underneath the ribs, our primary breathing muscle. Get used to seeing your belly move when you breathe. We’ve been conditioned to hold our stomachs in and breathe into our chests.

When talking to people about this, I’ll often hear, “but I can get more air in, breathing through my mouth!”

Sure, but you use less of it.

Breathing through the mouth gives us access to around two-thirds of the volume of our lungs. The diaphragm’s inactive so can’t drop and create space for the lungs to expand. When the diaphragm’s activated by nasal breathing, it contracts, dropping down and allowing for full expansion of the lungs, meaning more alveoli, the air sacks that make up the lungs, get used.

Less really is more.

More genetic genius incoming…

The primary nerve that innervates the diaphragm’s called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is what a) triggers the body’s relaxation response (parasympathetic), and b) lowers its stress response (sympathetic). So breathing through the nose alone allows you to use MORE oxygen AND feel more relaxed.

Relaxed is great, but more of anything only matters if you can use it.

To use the oxygen from the air we breathe, it needs to pass from the little air sacks in the lungs to the blood, and then get released by the blood for use by organs, tissue…anything requiring oxygen, so, pretty much everything.

To do that is to take advantage of something called the Bohr effect, which works not on raising oxygen levels, but raising carbon dioxide levels. This is a completely safe, natural, and vital function of the human body, and we can take advantage by doing two things.

• Lengthening exhales - As a general rule, double the length of the inhale. e.g. In for 3, out for 6.

• Introducing a brief (1 - 2 seconds to begin with) pause at the end of either the inhale or exhale.

Doing both of these things will not improve the saturation of oxygen in your system, but, through the longer exhales, bring you into a deep sense of relaxation and calm.

So here’s the basis of this week’s practice, what we call a triangle breath. You’ll set your daily timer for 4 minutes and 59 seconds ;), and breathe with a 4.2.8.0 tempo. That’s a 4-second nasal inhale, a 2-second hold, an 8-second nasal exhale, and straight back into the inhale. If the 8-second hold’s too much at this stage, shorten both the inhale and exhale to create a 3.2.6.0 tempo.

If you’re pregnant or have any pre-existing heart conditions, skip the hold and focus only on the longer exhale aspect of the breath.

Longer exhale breathing tempos and short holds are an excellent way to start to train your breath and your nervous system, and to learn to use the remote control that is your breath. Use it at times of stress, before bed, or whenever you just want to centre into yourself for a moment of calm or focus. So remember. Nasal breathing only, and let the belly do the work (inhale, belly out: exhale, belly in) rather than the chest.

In love and health,

Alex

Book Recommendation - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor is a fascinating, fun and extremely readable adventure into the heart and history of why and how to breathe better.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes only and is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical or psychological conditions. This information is not intended as a substitute for medical advice and readers should always consult their doctor, physician or registered healthcare practitioner before implementing anything they read in The Edge.