5 Breathing Hacks to Transform Your Sleep & Focus | Patrick McKeown | Align Podcast #543
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Patrick McKeown, thank you for making time to come back again. I think this might be the third conversation we've had. Yeah, I think it is actually. Pleasure. Thanks very much, Aaron. Patrick, what is breathing? Well, that's a question, isn't it? It really depends. Everybody has their own idea of what breathing is. What's breath work? Because it can range from the most gentlest and subtlest of breathing exercises to the most extreme breathing.

And I don't say that lightly. You know, what you can do with the breath is very powerful. One could argue that it's even more powerful than physical exercise. You can reduce blood flow to the brain by 20 to 40 percent, or you can increase blood flow to the brain by 20 to 40 percent. You can bring it into your rest, into your movement, into your sleep. You can hyperventilate. You can hypoventilate. So breathing is a system whereby you have an understanding of what's involved with breath and you can influence the body and mind differently.

And it's very important that when we talk about breathing, that we know what we're actually doing. Now, that's not a criticism or anything like that. You know, if we think of ultimately our breathing involves, we have an inspiration, we have an expiration. So in the face of it, it's pretty simple. And with that, we can either speed up our breathing. We breathe faster. That's a stressor. Or we can slow down our breathing. And that typically is a relaxer. We could breathe harder.

and taking full breaths. And if it causes a lowering of carbon dioxide, it can be a stressor. We can breathe lighter by breathing less air with each breath to generate a small degree of air hunger that can induce relaxation. We can hold our breath either for a short period of time at the top of the inhalation or the bottom of the exhalation, or we can hold our breath for a long period of time

at the top of the inhalation or the bottom of the exhalation. We can breathe through our nose, our mouth or any combination. We can breathe high, we can breathe low. But that's it with breathing. Every breathing exercise under the sun meets those few parameters. That's all you can do. You can either adjust the speed, the volume, stop breathing, or change how you breathe. That's it. When you say

The 20 to 40% changing the blood oxygen. Can you go through that? What does that look like? Being able to oscillate the toggle up and down? You know, I was going in to do an exam 25 years past more, getting old now, maybe 1996. It's almost 30 years ago. And I was feeling a bit anxious going into the exam hall, you know.

And I'd read this thing about breathing that if you wanted to calm down, you would take these full big breaths, full deep breaths. So I went for a walk for a minute or two and I filled my lungs with air. I was breathing slowly, but I was taking full big breaths. I only did it for about two minutes or so, but I literally remember being in that exam hall feeling disoriented. Now, that was a breathing exercise that I was doing to try and calm down, but I didn't realize back then

that the full big breaths that I was taking was blowing off too much carbon dioxide. And because I was already in a state of chronic hyperventilation, it didn't do it and it didn't need much to kind of tip me over the edge. So by taking a full big breath, even slow breathing, I might have been breathing 18 breaths per minute, sorry, 18 liters per minute. So I might have been breathing six or seven breaths per minute, but each breath was three liters. I'm filling my lungs.

So there's six by three is 18 liters of air. Now that's plenty of air to blow off too much carbon dioxide. And as you get rid of too much carbon dioxide from the lungs, it reduces carbon dioxide in the blood leaving the lungs. And that in turn reduces blood flow to the brain. And that's why I felt lightheaded. That's why I felt disoriented. And I would genuinely say it took about 10 to 15 minutes for me to get back. Because if you're in a state of chronic hyperventilation, and if your carbon dioxide levels are already too low,

The person who breathes more air on top of how they are already breathing, they have a delayed return to baseline. It will take a lot longer for their carbon dioxide to creep up towards normal. So when we think about carbon dioxide being the bad guy and oxygen being the good guy, well, it's not quite so true. If you want to get rid of, if you want to, you know, increase blood flow to the brain, you have to be thinking about holding onto your carbon dioxide.

If you want to reduce blood flow to the brain, you have to be thinking about getting rid of your carbon dioxide. And how do you do that? By your breathing. And that is the Bohr effect. Yeah, that's another aspect of it, actually. There's a few different factors that come in. What is the Bohr effect in terms of blood flow to the brain? Well, okay, let's go into a little bit more detail.

When we lose carbon dioxide, smooth muscle constricts. So if you think about smooth muscle that's embedded in the blood vessels, it's also embedded in the airways and other organs. So if we are breathing too much air and we get rid of too much carbon dioxide, blood vessels constrict, they physically narrow. Some people will experience this as brain fog. They may experience it as anxiety, panic, or even just cold hands and cold feet. In other words, their circulation

is reduced as a result of breathing too much air. That's one aspect. The second is the Bohr effect. So if we think about when we take a breath of air into the body, and oxygen passes from the lungs into the blood, most oxygen 98.5% of oxygen is carried in the blood bound by hemoglobin. If we want hemoglobin to release oxygen more readily, we should be thinking about carbon dioxide. Because if we breathe a little bit less air,

carbon dioxide increases in the lungs and blood. And as carbon dioxide increases in the blood, blood pH drops and hemoglobin releases oxygen more readily to the tissues and organs. But then there's a third factor in terms of the effect that breathing has on the brain. And that's carbon dioxide and resultant blood pH. So again, if I want to increase blood flow to the brain, I can either hold my breath

or I can breathe less air, or I can do physical exercise with my mouth closed, breathing in and out through the nose. And I know I'm increasing carbon dioxide in the lungs and blood when I feel air hunger, because that sensation of air hunger is driven by the accumulation of carbon dioxide. So as carbon dioxide increases, blood pH drops just slightly, and that helps to reduce brain cell excitability.

So we have a lot of influence on the brain and we have to consider that the brain is likely the most vital organ in the human body, aside from the heart. It consumes about 20% of our oxygen. It's very, very hungry for oxygen. It's 2% of our body weight, but consumes 20% of oxygen. It's very important that the brain gets adequate oxygen. And we have a direct pathway to influence that. And it's not about taking the full big breaths.

Not about slowing down your breathing and even breathing large tidal volumes, because that could even do the opposite in terms of increasing blood flow to the brain. So that's where the conversation should be around breathing, or at least part of it. How much air do you breathe? Do we over-breathe ourselves into anxiety or do we anxiety ourselves into over-breathing? Oh, I think it's both. It's a good question, you know.

Our breathing changes in response to what's going on in the mind. But of course, how we breathe is going to influence what's going on in the mind. And the other thing we need to tie in there is sleep, because whatever is going on in the mind is going to impact sleep. And if sleep quality is poor, well, that's going to feed into what's going on in the mind. So the one thing about the breath is that we have some degree of control over it. And by changing our breathing patterns, and this is coming back to your first question, what is breathing? Like, what's my definition of breathing?

Well, I have to think of the application of breathing in my personal life and also in the people that I've worked with. What do I want? If somebody comes in through my door, what do I want them most to achieve? I want to give them the tools to be able to self-regulate, to improve blood flow to the brain, to understand breathing, to increase oxygen delivery, to improve their sleep, to reduce sleep disorder breathing, to balance the nervous system and to have control over their physiology.

And there's something very, very important about this because we can have to bring a quietness to the mind, not just by having our attention directed to the breath, but by actually changing our physiology that we set up the right foundation for a quieter and calmer mind. I'm going to put it this way. For years, I had mouth breathing and stuffy nose and upper chest breathing and faster breathing and harder breathing. My body was constantly telling my brain that my body was under threat.

My mind was all over the place. I lived in my head. I had lots of thought activity going on. I was a poor sleeper and none of those things helped. And if somebody said to me, go and do mindfulness, well, I would say that mindfulness is not going to do anything for me because when you have poor sleep and when you have poor breathing, those are the things that you need to target before you start directing your attention. It's a lot easier to be mindful when the mind is a little bit quieter physiologically.

And that way, then we're going to set it up as a more of a success. You know, I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to do mindfulness when your physiology and your autonomic nervous system is in an increased stress response. And one will, of course, say to me that mindfulness will help that. Well, it might to a certain degree, but it's not going to be as targeted and as direct. Why not simply give people the tools to manipulate their breath?

to be able to do that. It's much quicker, it's much direct, they feel it, they'll stick with it. Can you say more about the, what would it be, neuronal excitability, synaptic excitability in relation to your breath and how that could pertain to the way that we think and the way that we feel? Yeah, this is known for a long time. You know, it was written back in 1924 that researchers realized that they could help to reduce epileptic seizures by

changing breathing. And the way that we change breathing is to increase carbon dioxide. And there was a paper written back in 1988 by Somnian and Balestrino. And I remember the paper and I wrote about it in the book back in 2010. And then I'd forgotten about it. And then I heard Dr. Andrew Huberman in his podcast, and he started talking about the paper.

And there's a famous kind of quote in that paper, and it says that the brain by regulating breathing controls its own excitability. And it controls its own excitability specifically by carbon dioxide and result in blood pH. So then if we take this one step further, there is a psychiatrist called Michael Binder. And he is literally talking that people with mental health issues have increased and heightened neuronal excitability.

They have severely elevated brain cell excitability, meaning that their brain cells are firing all over the place. And that's a recipe for increased thinking and increased rumination.

So there's something physically going on in terms of a lot of thought activity that's going on in the mind and people with mental health issues very often. The issue is that they overthink and they cannot stop thinking. But if that's due or at least partly contributed to by increased neuronal excitability, how then can we have to bring in quietness to the mind by reducing how the brain cells are firing? Because we don't want brain cells firing all over the place. You know, if you think we have about 80 billion brain cells,

And each brain cell is communicating with about 15,000 other brain cells. So there's a lot of activity going on there. But if the activity is abnormal, well, you know, it can set up situations that are not ideal. And in an extreme situation, it could be somebody having an epileptic seizure.

depending, of course, on genetics. Now, doctors know this, neurologists know this, like there is a test that's often conducted in hospitals. When a child may have or may be prone to epileptic seizures, the doctor will ask the child to hyperventilate. They do a hyperventilation provocation test to have them breathe hard and fast for about between one and three minutes, and they monitor brainwave activity.

and they're able to ascertain by the brainwave activity from the hyperventilation, could this child be prone to seizures? Now if neurologists understand the connection between hyperventilation and brain health, what often I wonder about is why aren't neurologists teaching these kids and teenagers and adults how to be able to regulate your breathing so that you're not over breathing, how to be able to control your stress levels so that you're not going into that faster and harder breathing pattern.

So in terms of brain cell excitability, it comes back to what we were talking about earlier on. Breathing is the one function in human health that we can influence the brain very, very strongly. And it's not just by increasing blood flow and increasing oxygen delivery, but it's also by reducing brain cell excitability. But we also have to bear in mind this. The brain is spying on our breathing.

This was identified back in 2017. And Stanford Medical School identified a structure in the brain in the pre-Botzinger complex, which is right at the back of the brain where the brain is connecting to the spinal cord and the brainstem.

And they said that this structure is spying on your breath. So if you breathe a little bit faster and a bit harder, your brain literally is interpreting that the body is under threat and your brain but put you into an arousal mode and fight, flight or freeze mode. And that's of course your brain's attempt or you know, motive to protect the body. But it doesn't help us. We're going into a challenging meeting, we're breathing a bit faster and a bit harder.

The brain picks up that the body is under threat. The brain puts us into a fight or flight response. We can't even think straight because all the brain wants to do is get us out of the situation. So it's very important for us to realize that how we're breathing is communicating to the brain whether we're safe or whether we are under threat.

And we also have to bear in mind our everyday breathing patterns. It's not just how you're breathing going into the meeting. It's how are we breathing every minute, every hour and every day. I had dysfunctional breathing. 75% of the population with anxiety and panic disorder have dysfunctional breathing. 30% of the asthma population have dysfunctional breathing. You know, it depends what is the definition of dysfunctional breathing. It really depends on which dimension researchers are looking at.

Are they looking at the biochemical dimension, which is focused in carbon dioxide? Are they looking at the biomechanical dimension, which is focused on whether they are breathing high in the upper chest or low, with good recruitment of the diaphragm? Are they looking at the psychophysiological dimension, which is the mind-body connection? So, you know, always when we think about what is dysfunctional breathing, I have to wonder, well, what were the researchers looking at here? Did they look at one dimension of breathing? Did they look at all three? How did they assess it? How did they measure it?

And I think there is a conversation that there's plenty of people now getting involved with breathing. But ultimately, the thing about breathing is how do you know that your breathing is improving, you have to be able to assess your breathing patterns first. And if you know how you are already breathing, it's easier than to tailor breathing exercises according to how you are already breathing. I have to tailor breathing exercises to my clients. If I don't,

I could put them into panic. I could put them into anxiety. I could have an adverse reaction. I have to know how are they breathing. You know, so not every breathing exercise suits everybody. And also, I suppose it depends on the person's genetics. It depends on their age. It depends on their state of health. It depends on their breathing pattern. And I just goes for anything, a personal trainer, a good personal trainer,

will always provide a training regime based on that person's fitness, their state of health, their age, and other parameters. And we need to do the same with breathing as well. So yeah, so coming back to neuronal excitability, I think it's really tremendous to think that we can help to have a physiological change in the brain

simply by breathing a little bit less air, but not even, you know, people might say, well, I don't have the time or how do you do that? It's very, very simple. Like even if you just went for a walk with your mouth closed, you would have increased CO2 in your lungs and in your blood. If you're, if you did your yoga, breathing in and out through your nose with silent breathing, silent breathing, not intentionally taking the full deep breaths,

That's another conversation, Aaron, because, you know, when did the full big breaths in yoga come into being? They weren't around a thousand years ago. They weren't around 2000 years ago. They weren't even around 500 years ago. Up until 1880, the breathing in yoga was all about subtle breath. It was about conservation of the breath. It was about light breathing. It was about breathing less air. Yogi masters could hold their breath for 180 seconds. They had such control over their breathing.

But in 1880, there was a movement in Europe. And the belief was that if you took these full deep breaths, you would have to prevent the germs of tuberculosis spreading throughout the lungs or spreading throughout the body. So TB was rampant in Europe at that time, people were dying with it, it was affecting the respiratory system. And the hygiene movement taught that if we encourage full deep breaths, we would save people in terms of getting TB. And that idea from Europe

went to India and changed breathing in yoga in India. So I think it's time to do full circle. You know, the original yogi masters, they knew they may not have had the science. They didn't have to, but they knew the body and they knew the breath. Like there's a time to take full big breaths. If you're doing controlled hyperventilation. Yes, it's release of trauma. It's activating a stress response. It can be good for a reset. But the most natural way to take full deep breaths is to do physical exercise.

You know, anybody who ramps up your intensity during physical movement, the respiratory rate naturally gets faster, the tidal volume increases, and your minute volume, it could increase to plus 100 litres per minute. So if somebody feels that it's beneficial to take full big breaths, yes, do it, but go for a sprint. In other words, let your breathing, your ventilation match your increased metabolic need. And that way then, you know,

you'll get all the benefits from taking the full deep breaths. You'll get all the benefits from working your respiratory system. Now, if you have your mouth closed, it's a different story than mouth open. And there's a conversation there. So I don't know where to go with this, Aaron. So I'm going to

give it back to you. When a person is so going into the realm of, you know, breathing more hyperventilation, what are some of the potential pitfalls or not of a person not matching their metabolic need? So breathing as though they're in some panic situation or

or at like fifth gear, you know, high amplitude exercise situation, but you are laying still in a breathwork class. Are there any issues in that conflict and are there benefits or are you completely anti that, which I doubt you align with the language of anti, but what are your thoughts about that? No, I've heard many good things about people doing controlled hyperventilation in terms of a release and a reset and especially of emotions.

How does it happen? It's likely that the controlled hyperventilation, which is involving faster and harder breathing, is getting rid of a lot of carbon dioxide from the lungs and in turn from the blood leaving the lungs. That in turn is driving up blood pH and that's initiating a stress response. And it can be very helpful for the person to relieve themselves of trauma or to reduce the effect the trauma is having on them. What is your definition of what's happening there?

I think it's solely down to the resultant loss of carbon dioxide. I can't think of now what is happening. Does anybody really know? No. Because obviously you've thought about this. And if there's anyone to ask about this, I think you would be a really interesting person because I have my own theories and I jumble some words together for it. But I'm very curious your perception of what's happening to be able to use

controlled hyperventilation or hyperventilation or whatever you want to call it, to be able to start to access deep stored held stuff within the self. I suppose in the face of it, you have to think of what's going on there. There's so many different feedbacks from the body in terms of breathing to the brain. You know, you've got stretch receptors in the lungs. They will be detecting that you're breathing faster and harder.

You've got the resultant diaphragm fatigue that may be happening or if the person is really working their diaphragm. You've got the lowering of carbon dioxide from the lungs and from the blood, reducing blood flow to the brain, driving up blood pH. You've got the reduction of oxygen going to the brain. You're likely having the amygdala kick in as well because it's sensing the faster and harder breathing. The pre-Botzinger complex is kicking in because it's spying on your breath and it's realizing, yes, the rhythm has changed and there's a communication there.

So I think there's so much going on, but ultimately is it to the point that the body, that the body or brain is sensing that the person is in such heightened stress response to that just kind of gives in, it's like a reset button. I don't know. I really can't figure it out. Um, but I think it is, I think it's the mechanism of carbon dioxide that's causing the big change there by breathing too hard and too fast and lowering CO2. And it could be just driving up blood pH.

You know, if you have to think about what is the one factor here that's having the big impact on the brain and its focus, it's focusing around carbon dioxide. I don't think it's oxygen. And you know, because if you breathe hard and fast, yes, you're bringing more oxygen into your lungs. You will increase the partial pressure of oxygen in your lungs. I'm sorry, you will increase Yeah, you will increase PO2 in your lungs, you will increase the PO2 in the blood. And you know, the oxygen dissolved in the plasma will increase.

your blood oxygen saturation will increase slightly. But at the same time, you'll have a left shift of the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve because of the loss of carbon dioxide. So hemoglobin is holding onto oxygen more readily. So I don't think it's oxygen. I think it's carbon dioxide. And the one thing like I do sometimes wonder then,

You know, so many people get benefit of life genuinely spoke with hundreds and hundreds over the years who were practicing and many of our instructors are also in conscious connected breathing or Wim Hof instructors. So there's definitely benefits. I have to think about is there a possible downside to it? And the possible downside to it that

The person is getting not addicted, but getting reliant on the euphoric feeling brought about by the hyperventilation. And over time, the hyperventilation could increase their sensitivity to the gas carbon dioxide. In other words, because they're doing controlled practice hyperventilation and they're blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide, could it adjust the brain's tolerance to CO2? And if it reduces the tolerance of carbon dioxide, it will have a negative impact in the person's everyday breathing pattern.

And that person is more likely then to have a faster breathing and a harder breathing pattern, possibly irregular breathing. They may feel that they're not getting an affair. So even though they're getting the euphoric response from doing the controlled hyperventilation, depending on how long it's going on for, how are they breathing afterwards as a result of it long term?

Does the person have a belief that when they're doing controlled hyperventilation, that there's oxygen roaming freely throughout the body and that it's increasing oxygen throughout the body? And this is causing euphoric effect because that's not the case. So it also depends on how a person interprets it. Another aspect is that if you have somebody with chronic hyperventilation syndrome, which is the most common form of dysfunctional breathing patterns,

And basically, by definition, it means that the person is breathing a bit faster and harder to cause a lowering of carbon dioxide. So their CO2 levels long term are likely to be low, that can be relatively common. It's not always that their CO2 is low, CO2 fluctuates, you know, so it can be tricky enough to measure, but they can have a reduced buffering capacity. And what that means is that

Because of the previous hyperventilation, chronic hyperventilation, the kidneys have dumped bicarbonate. So they're left with reduced buffering capacity. So their body's ability to bind then with acid is reduced. Now, those individuals who are in a state of chronic hyperventilation and who have reduced buffering capacity, they're more likely to feel the symptoms of vasoconstriction so much quicker.

So if they hyperventilate, they will feel the effects in their brain. There's going to be reduced cerebral blood flow. There's reduced blood flow to the brain in the brain. They will feel it quicker than a person with good functional breathing. And also that person with chronic hyperventilation syndrome. No, no, not only will they experience the effects differently to somebody with functional breathing, it will also take them a lot longer to return back to baseline. So you also have to think also what else is happening in terms of the heart.

I've met a couple of people who've had strokes as a result of doing hyperventilation and breath holds. You know, what is happening there? If you do 30 full big breaths and then you do a reasonably long breath hold, during the reasonably long breath hold, blood oxygen saturation in the first cycle may drop down to about 85%. I wouldn't expect anything too negative from that. That's what we do all the time.

But then if you do another cycle of hyperventilation followed by another reasonably long breath hold, blood oxygen saturation go down to about 70%, possibly 60%, depending on the intensity of the breath hold. But then if you do another cycle of hyperventilation followed by breath holding, blood oxygen saturation can drop below 50%. Now when blood oxygen saturation drops below 50% there is a reduction of blood flow to the brain, but there's also a reduction of blood flow to the heart.

So it's very, very tough. You know, like I see a place for all breathing exercises, but I'm just a bit cautious, genuinely. And the reason being is I'm 23 years teaching breathing exercise. I've seen that breathing exercises are powerful. I don't want to have an adverse reaction. I don't want people getting sick as a result of something that I'm teaching them. Touch wood, Aaron, because I've kind of kept the middle way

Yeah, I've put people into panic attacks, many of them, you know, genuinely. It took me a while to figure out what was happening in panic disorder that wasn't happening when people don't have the condition. I remember as well with many people with chronic fatigue syndrome, I didn't fully take into consideration such dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. I went a bit too hard with them with Brett Tolling and I would floor them.

So I've made mistakes with breathing, you know, but at the same time, the mistakes that I made with breathing, the people recovered. But I've also come across people with some serious health issues associated with breathing practice. And I will say, you know, it wasn't my breathing practice and it involved hyperventilation and long breath holds. So when is a good stress become a bad stress? And this is the conversation that we were having earlier on. Like,

I think breathing needs to be tailored. I think it really, really does need to be tailored. I've practiced a little bit of hyperventilation. I don't know if it does anything for me. I don't know if it suits my temperament.

I'm kind of more of an introvert and I don't even know are introverts drawn to one breathing technique versus another and extrovert is drawn to another. I really don't know. And this is the thing about breathing. You know, so I would say to people as well that you might find that you're practicing a breathing technique and you might think it's for you, but that's okay. There's breathing exercises that are not for me, but then I know by practice the breathing exercises that are

And those are the ones that I really love. I will genuinely say that breathing changed my life. You know, it reduced my thought activity 30%. It increased my sleep. It improved my focus, my concentration, reduced my stress levels. It done everything that education didn't do. You know, that's what breathing has done for me.

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Is there, if a person was going to go to, you know, they're in Tulum and they've got some flowy clothes on, there's a breath work thing happening at the Mandala Center at 730. Is there any type of test that you would hope that the instructor might provide or what an individual can provide for themselves, whether controlled hyperventilation is something that is a yay or nay for them?

Yeah, like I suppose the easiest way to test a very simple screening tool is the length of your breath all time. So this will be the control pause from the Buteyko method, the bold score from the oxygen advantage. So you have everybody sitting down, they're resting, they're having normal breathing for about three, four minutes. And then you just ask them to take a normal breath in through their nose and out through their nose and pinch their nose and hold their breath.

and time it in seconds, how long does it take for the brain to react? And you know that your brain is reacted when you feel the first definite desire to breathe, or the first involuntary movement of the diaphragm, the breathing muscles, and then you take a breath in, but your breath should be normal. So another way to test it would be have a normal exhalation. So breathe out through your nose just normally hold your breath. How long can you hold your breath for and still have normal breathing when you resume breathing? Now if that test is under 25 seconds,

And the more it's under 25 seconds, the more cautious I would be doing hyperventilation techniques. Interesting. If it was 20 seconds, yeah, you could do it. If it was 10 seconds, I would say don't do it. Because at that point, you're, you know, it's likely that your low breath hold time is because of reduced buffering capacity. There's changes in the body or you're more likely to be stuck in a faster and harder breathing pattern. You're already breathing too hard and too fast.

And the heightened hyperventilation on top of that could make things worse. The other thing that I would say is it has to be taken into consideration what health conditions do these people have? You know, if there was somebody with epilepsy, if there was somebody with cardiovascular issues, if there was somebody with panic disorder, would the hyperventilation, could it have an adverse reaction? And the third thing that I would be looking at is their age. I don't do extreme or we don't do extreme breathing anyway. We do severe breathing.

So say if I use severe would be long breath holds, but long breath holds during movement, typically dynamic breath holds, which is different to static breath holds. But I don't do them if somebody is over 60, I will not do them. And the reason being is because our body at 60 years of age isn't the same body as somebody with 30 or 40 years of age. Now, of course, there's plenty of healthy 60 year olds and there's plenty of unhealthy 40 year olds. So it's not a perfect example.

but I still want to kind of minimize risk. - And the, I interrupted you before to see what your interpretation of what's happening with kind of like the psychedelic trauma-informed part of breathwork. If a person is hyperventilating or breathing as though they're doing a lot of physical work, but they're actually musculoskeletally, metabolically not doing any work practically at all, is that a problem in any, and for any reason?

Well, it depends on the person. I think we kind of went through some of the reasons that it could be a problem for some people. And for many people, it's not a problem. You know, I have heard plenty of positive reports of people getting so much good out of hyperventilation that it has been life changing in terms of the release of emotions.

And they really got a lot out of it. Just particularly the disassociation or disconnect of actual connected physical activity inducing that type of breathing to laying down, like just that disconnect. Because there's something very important and special about a person actually sprinting

and getting into that, okay, I'm breathing really heavily type orientation to just sitting on a park bench doing the same breathing like that part. Is there something special about that, that it would be really supportive if the body was moving to match those needs or does that not matter that much? I'm sure. I don't know if I get your question, but if I was to ask what's the main difference between breathing fast and hard during rest during in a stationary position versus breathing fast and hard,

when your ventilation is matching your metabolic needs the main difference there is going to be carbon dioxide is the main difference is there a problem for that or would it just be the same the same conversation as as before well if you blow off too much carbon dioxide you have 50 000 miles of blood vessels throughout the human body they are narrowing if you blow off too much carbon dioxide you're increasing blood ph and it's not a case of the more alkaline the better that's not true

You know, the body ceases when the blood pH increases to 7.8 or drops to below 6.8. We cease. And the other factor then is the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve that's blowing off so much carbon dioxide is causing hemoglobin to hold on to oxygen. So there's that aspect. Of course, it's just a stressor.

But the only reason that I talked about it, Aaron, is because people will say, well, surely I should be breathing full big breaths so that I can really erase all parts of my lungs. And I say, of course you can, but do it the way animals do it. You know, we have racehorses outside. We have a couple of horses outside. I don't see the horses out there hyperventilating in the fields. The horse hasn't an idea in its head that the more air it breathes, the better.

but the horse will run. And while the horse is running, it's running with its mouth closed and it will naturally have increased ventilation. But if that horse is in good health, the ventilation will match the metabolic requirements. See, normally carbon dioxide shouldn't really change very much. You know, it's really, really a constant, a constant pressure in the lungs and blood. It doesn't deviate typically by more than three millimeters of mercury. It's very, very small changes.

And if carbon dioxide is going all over the place, well, it implies that breathing is all over the place. And if breathing is all over the place, the mind is all over the place. So I think this is a gas that has such bad press and people don't fully kind of deep dig into it. It's produced internally by the body. We don't bring in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, if I can remember correctly, is 0.0004%.

of the atmosphere. Oxygen on the other hand is 21%. But yet the pressure of carbon dioxide in the lungs and in the blood is 5%. So we produce this gas internally. And we only breathe out 15% of the gas, we actually hold on to 85%. So it's not correct when people say it's a waste gas, we only breathe out 15%. That's what we breathe out.

It's not a waste gas. Is there such a thing as too much carbon dioxide tolerance or too much? See, I'm sure the answer is yes to too much of anything. It's just, it's, you know, the nature of the concept of too much, but, uh,

Is there such a thing as too much CO2 buildup in the system in like a normal non-pathological person if there is such a thing as pathology around that? Yeah, like I suppose for you to really increase carbon dioxide, you either have to stop breathing altogether. That's probably the easiest way to do it, you know. And the air hunger that would generate it would be so intense. And I know, of course, people can train themselves and they can train their body to adapt to a higher tolerance of carbon dioxide.

And, you know, typically with breath tolls, we would like to increase carbon dioxide to over 50 millimeters of mercury. It takes quite an increase of carbon dioxide pressure to cause a person to pass out. Again, if I remember correctly, I think it's 92 millimeters of mercury, but it's a long time since I looked at those stats. I'm sure if somebody looked into Google, they would find them easily enough, you know, but you have to bear in mind that if we're holding our breath, it's not just the carbon dioxide is increasing.

in the lungs because of course it can't leave the body so it's going to increase in the lungs. And then of course if it increases in the lungs the gas is going to increase in the blood leaving the lungs. And when carbon dioxide increases in the blood, blood pH drops. The brain is going to pick up and drop the blood pH and the intensity of the signaling to breathe is going to be very very strong. So it's quite difficult for people to hold their breath following normal breathing to the point that they pass out.

And the reason being is because the buildup of carbon dioxide and the resultant air hunger is really driving your breathing and for you to keep on holding the breath, going past it is quite, quite difficult to do. It's a different story now if you hyperventilate, if you hyperventilate, you get rid of a lot of carbon dioxide. So now then when you do a breath hold, you're starting from a very low place in CO2. And you'll be able to hold your breath for a long, long time because of course,

the hyperventilation has depleted the alarm to breathe. So then when that person does a breath hold following hyperventilation, it will take some time for the carbon dioxide to start increasing in the lungs in the blood to trigger breathing. So that's the difference. So coming back to your question, you know, I don't like with breathing exercises, the body is so sensitive to the increase of carbon dioxide that

it would be very, very unusual, very unlikely for a person to under breathe to the point with breathing practice, with controlled breathing practice, that carbon dioxide levels will get dangerous. Two to three millimetre increase of CO2 will double ventilation. And it is known as well, you know, in sports that elite and well-trained athletes have reduced tolerance to CO2. There's something very, very positive about having a reduced tolerance to CO2. You know, you have

You have lighter breathing, you've got slower breathing. There's also a connection between carbon dioxide sensitivity and the baroreflex sensitivity. And with that, then the autonomic nervous system. So if somebody has, I would be more concerned with the opposite. So many people have a strong sensitivity to carbon dioxide. You know, their drive to breathe is too hard and too fast. And if there's a strong sensitivity to carbon dioxide, they will have disproportionate breathlessness during physical exercise. They're more likely to be breathing hard and faster during sleep.

if they have a condition called sleep apnea and they stop breathing during sleep. And if they have an overly stronger sensitivity to carbon dioxide, they have a phenotype called high loop gain, but that in turn will feed into their sleep apnea. And also the connection between having a strong sensitivity to carbon dioxide and a reduced, it would mean that there's a reduced baroreflex sensitivity so that the pressure receptors in the major blood vessels

aren't really able, they're not sensitive enough to be picking up on the changes in blood pressure. So that person then is more prone to cardiovascular issues such as higher blood pressure or lower blood pressure. So I think the question should be,

What about the people with strong sensitivity to carbon dioxide will reduce the O2 tolerance? You know, and like what comes into my mind, I'd say most of your listeners do physical exercise and probably it's likely that 96% of them have their mouth open during physical exercise, especially during, you know, when the exercise intensity ramps up a little bit. What if they were to do their physical exercise with their mouth closed?

But if they were to gradually improve their CO2 tolerance. So yes, today they start doing their physical exercise with their mouth closed. Next week, they might find that they can do a little bit more physical exercise with their mouth closed. They might be able to go a little bit faster for longer. The week after might increase again. And in about eight to 10 weeks, they will be able to do all the physical exercise with their mouth closed that they were doing with their mouth open. But with about 20% less ventilation. That's due to...

improved or increased tolerance to CO2. Now there's a health benefit there because if you do your physical exercise, which are my clothes, you have improved blood circulation, but you've also increased blood flow, sorry, not just blood flow, but also increased oxygenation. So you think of the working muscles, you know, we've had so many reports over the years with

delayed onset muscle soreness reduced better recovery post physical exercise. We've tracked heart rate variability data, individuals who have trained to do their physical exercise, especially during ultramarathons, their HRV is more optimal with nasal breathing after they have adapted to it and mouth breathing. I had a podcast with George Dahlem about two, three months ago. So he's a sports scientist, he's been involved in, you know,

teaching sports medicine for about, I don't know, four or five decades. So he's due for retirement if he hasn't already retired. And he wrote his last paper, at least one of his final papers were, could nasal breathing mitigate and reduce the risk of cardiac fibrosing in endurance athletes? So his take was that you will have an endurance athlete, you have an individual there who's doing a lot of mileage, you know, they're putting a lot of stress in their heart,

But not only are they putting a lot of stress in their heart, they're reducing blood flow to the heart. They're not supplying the heart with adequate blood flow for the amount of work that the heart has to do. And the reason being is because they have their mouth open. And because they're mouth breathing during their physical exercise, they can be getting rid of too much carbon dioxide. That in turn is causing blood vessels to narrow. And of course, the heart is not just about pumping blood throughout the body, but the heart needs its own blood supply and oxygen.

So his theory was, could nasal breathing help to mitigate, you know, the effects of fibrosing that develops in athletes as a result of overdoing it? Because if you breathe through your nose during physical exercise, you're going to have increased carbon dioxide in the lungs and increased carbon dioxide in the blood leaving the lungs. And that in turn is going to increase blood flow to the brain and blood flow to the heart. So now you're doing physical exercise with increased blood flow. That makes sense.

Now, sports scientists have yet to catch on about this. I wrote about it 15, was it 10 years ago, sorry, in the book, The Oxygen Advantage. I put a chapter in cardiovascular health in there. I spoke about the connection between hyperventilation and how it impacts the heart. None of this stuff is new. It's all out there. It's just not common knowledge. And that's a problem. Is the, and in relation to people listening to this, not...

or not nose breathing. I think they probably are. I feel like the information is circular. They've right at this point by now. If your listeners are innate nasal breathers, your population is so different to the normal population. Yeah, I think they're probably bad. That was something I wrote about mouth taping in my book like seven years ago or six years ago or something like that. And that was something that

uh, at the time of writing about that, I was very cautious and I was like, she talked to your dad. And I was, you know, I was, I was very like, Oh my God, this is feels crazy. Now it feels very normal and very common. It's a great thing to see. It is, you know, like I'll give you a story. I had a client I was working with back in 2003 and this client did asthma. And I asked the client, all of my clients to take their mats and the consultant, uh,

wrote me a letter, the asthma consultant. He wrote me a letter and he said that what I was doing was barbaric. And I wrote him a letter back and I said, the failure to address chronic oral breathing and asthma is barbaric. And he wrote me a letter back and he didn't like my tone of voice. So anyway, it didn't go anywhere. But, you know, even in doctors, I know when social media is mainstream, mouth taping is mainstream.

Doctors are not going to embrace mouth taping. I brought out a tape a few years ago, MyoTape, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a tape that surrounds the mouth, pulling the lips together. And I can understand why doctors are hesitant. We can't force somebody to nasal breathe if the nose isn't up for it.

So if, for example, there's a child with enlarged adenoids, of course, we want to make sure that that child is able to adequately breathe through their nose. If you have an adult with a very severely deviated septum or chronic rhinitis, we want to make sure that that person is able to breathe in and out through the nose. And the second thing is what's called mouth puffing and sleep apnea. Now, sleep apnea is a very interesting condition.

It affects an estimated 1 billion people on this planet, given that our population in this planet is about, what, 9 billion? And sleep apnea is likely to be the most common condition on this planet, but 85 to 90% of people don't get diagnosed. And the treatment for sleep apnea is a CPAP. That's the gold standard of treatment. And out of the people who get diagnosed, only 40% of people accept the treatment.

And out of the 40% of people who accept the treatment, 50% will abandon it within about six to 12 months. So here we have an entire cohort of sleep, people with sleep problems, and they are crying out for help. And changing their breathing patterns can make really wonderful changes with them. And I'm not going to say it's a cure, but I am going to say that if one is mild or moderate or even severe obstructive sleep apnea, it's really, really important to question how are you breathing?

from a biochemical point of view, a biomechanical point of view and a psychophysiological point of view. But we can't tape up people with moderate to severe sleep apnea unless the tape allows them to mouthpuff. Mouthpuffing is this: the person breathes in through the nose and out through the mouth. And I'm sure we've all seen it. If that person has to breathe out through the mouth, we have to allow them to happen.

If we, for example, put a tape across their mouth or they put a tape across their mouth and they can't mouth puff, it will worsen their sleep apnea. So in one study that was published in either 22 or 23,

50% of people with sleep apnea improved with mouth taping, but 50% got worse. And the 50% that got worse, got worse because the tape covered their mouth. It didn't allow mouth puffing. So anybody with sleep apnea, I would say, you're not going to know whether you're going to mouth puff or not. You can't tape across your mouth. It could be risky for you. And never just tape across the mouth.

You know, because if you're taping across your mouth, sorry, what I mean by that is don't just solely use mouth tape. You have to improve your breathing patterns. You know, if you have poor breathing from a biochemical or a biomechanical, like the biochemical dimension plays a role in sleep apnea. The biomechanical dimension plays a role because the diaphragm is actually connected with the upper airway to later muscles.

The psychophysiological dimension plays a role because 30% of people with sleep apnea have low arousal threshold. They have hyperarousal. So these individuals are in an increased stress response all the time. And breathing can play a huge role. But how many studies, Aaron, have investigated the role of functional breathing and sleep medicine in sleep apnea specifically?

Breathing in and out through the nose, using breath-tool time to measure chemosensitivity to carbon dioxide, breathing light, breathing slow, breathing deep. How many studies have investigated the role of breathing in sleep disorder breathing? Not one. Not one. It's an industry worth between $5 billion and $7 billion per year. And most of it is with the CPAP, which works. The CPAP machine works for people. But the problem is that not everybody can comply with it.

So, you know, it's really that's where I see a role with. And as I said, like when we were chatting, I've just completed writing 110,000 words book on sleep specifically and looking at women's sleep is different to men's sleep. Women's breathing is different to men's breathing. That often doesn't get a conversation as well. So this comes back to our question at the very start. What is breathing?

There's a lot to it. So how could a person if they are a taping their mouth shut at night, like I do, I now I find it to be something like incredibly important. I feel very uncomfortable. I actually don't have tape in my mouth. How can I get myself to a point where I can wean myself off of tape and just keep my mouth shut while I sleep? Do you want to win yourself off? I take my mouth.

I've been taping my mouth for 25 years. I would like to wean myself off. I would be an advocate for not having. Like if I do not, I notice myself, I will snore and I'll wake up with a dry mouth and all the things. I would like for that to be the mouth tape just to be a bonus, ideally. So I think it's very important as well to look at the muscles that are associated with breathing in and out through the nose. You've got the obi.

the orbicularis muscle, the tongue, the swallow. So correct oral function would be very, very important. And sometimes we just don't have great muscle tone. I don't think I have great muscle tone. You know, I know when I say, for example, if I'm flying long haul, I don't wear tape. My mouth is closed. It would be quite embarrassing otherwise, especially if I fall asleep, which I tend to do anyway, long haul flights. So, but I actually just wear the tape as a matter of a crutch.

Now, the only way that you can test whether you need to tape or not is just do without tape one night. And if you wake up with a moist mouth in the morning, you don't need tape. But if you wake up with a dry mouth in the morning, you do. So the easiest way to determine if you're breathing in and out through your mouth is whether you have a dry mouth. And a dry mouth in the morning is a risk factor for sleep disorder breathing.

And it's also known that if you're waking up at a dry mouth in the morning, your sleep quality isn't likely to be as good. You spend more time in light sleep and less time in deep sleep. So coming back to your question, myofunctional therapy would be what would be practiced alongside it just to help to cover any of the other aspects that wouldn't be covered just in breathing. So that way, then you could be more sure of it in terms of maintaining lip closure during sleep. Now,

I suppose I have to think about, you talked about snoring. Now snoring can happen through the mouth, which goes like this. I don't know if you're going to hear this, but maybe you can or maybe you don't. When I go like this, can you hear it? Ah!

Loud and clear. Yeah, loud and clear. It's funny, I did that at a presentation and nobody heard it. So I'm not sure about the mic here. So that's a mouth snore. Sometimes the AI will cancel out things that it doesn't like. But not that way. But that's a mouth snore, so it's a very throaty snore. So if you make the sound of a snore through your mouth like that, and now close your mouth and try and snore through your mouth with your mouth closed.

That's your nose. But the question is, can you snore through your mouth with your mouth closed? No, that's your nose, Aaron. Sorry. So the most common form of snoring is palatal snoring. And that's the soft palate at the back of the mouth that's vibrating in response to the airflow that's passing across it. But to do that,

That's nasal snoring. So what Aaron is trying to snore through his nose, which he's doing, but what I want to do is I want to isolate mouth snoring first. So mouth snoring is very common, but you can't mouth snore if your mouth is closed during sleep. So we can say with pretty much 100% confidence that if an individual is breathing solely through their nose,

they're not going to snore through their mouth because in order to snore through your mouth, you have to be breathing through it. Okay. So there's mouth snoring stopped. Okay. Now the next form of snoring is nose snoring. So this is when there's turbulence in the nose and where the nose is meeting the back of the throat, the nasopharynx. And it sounds like this.

I'm not sure if you heard that one. I got that one too. Yeah, Roger. So anybody, you know, you might have a partner or somebody is listening to this and they have a partner at home. They're saying this guy or probably it's mainly a man and he would snores, but some women do as well. And they're saying, well, he doesn't believe that I snore, that he snores. I'm telling him he's snoring, but he's not believing me. So I'll record him.

So if she records them and she plays the sound of the snoring back the following morning, she will know whether it's a nose snoring or a mouth snoring just by the sound. The mouth snoring is throaty. The nasal snoring is nasally. Now, mouth snoring we can stop. Nasal snoring we can significantly reduce. One would have to improve breathing patterns and increase the control pause or the bolt score, the length of breath hold time, to about 20-25 seconds.

we may not be able to stop nasal snoring altogether because nasal snoring isn't just the turbulence created by airflow going through the nose. It's also going to be made worse if the anatomy of the nose is pretty poor. So one way to help open up the nose then would be to wear a nasal dilator.

And those are the strips that people wear to get them in the drugstore or chemist. It helps to flare open their nostrils, makes breathing a bit easier. So yeah, long story short, mouth snoring is easy to stop. That's the most common form of snoring. Nasal snoring, we can significantly reduce it, possibly stop it, but we may not stop it altogether for some people if they have a compromised nasal airway.

What about making people more physically attractive with breath? How can we get hotter by improving our breathing? Well, I have to say, you know, if I look at somebody and I have their mouth open automatically, they don't look attractive to me. Genuinely, just even if I didn't change facial structure. You know, again, there's a lot of stuff out there on social media. Get your mouth closed. You have the tongue resting on the roof of the mouth.

As the tongue is resting on the roof of the mouth, it's helping to direct the maxilla, the lower, the forward, the top jaw forward and the mandible follows. That is true to a point with young children, Aaron. You know, I can say like some people say that my facial form has changed as a result of nasal breathing with correct tongue resting posture over the last 25 years. And literally I've spent half my life breathing through an open mouth because of chronic nasal congestion and half my life with my mouth closed.

but I've also went to an orthodontist. I went to Dr. William Hang in Agora Hills in California, and he helped to widen my palate. I don't think nasal breathing was going to be sufficient, but what I would say to anybody is if you do have a habit of chronic mouth breathing, it's not going to help craniofacial development. And really we need to be thinking about our children. Now, what do I mean by craniofacial development? It's known since 1872

that if a child say for example has enlarged adenoids and adenoids are lymphatic tissue right at the back of the nose where it meets the throat and if that child's adenoids are enlarged the child isn't going to be able to breathe through their nose if they feel that you know airflow is restricted and they feel uncomfortable but then that child is going to breathe through their mouth when the child breathes through their mouth they drop their tongue from the roof of the mouth as the child is growing

Because of poor resting tongue posture and oral breathing, mouth breathing, it will influence the shape of the face, the growth of the face. Their face will tend to be longer. They're more likely to have a gummy smile, more likely to have flatter cheeks. The maxilla, which is the top jaw, is not forward enough. And as a result, their nose is more likely to be bent because the maxilla is too far back. And the mandible also is likely to be too far back.

Now, you know, if you go into Google and just put in adenoid faces, that's a medical term that was written back in 1872 by a guy called C.V. Tomes. I have no idea who he is. I can't find out about him. But anyway, he's accredited for coming up with that name. So the medical world has realized this for a long, long time.

enlarged adenoids, which would cause mouth breathing, change the shape of the face. These kids don't look, it's not just the looks, it's just, see, here's the thing, okay? We all want to be hot, yeah? And we all want to attract a partner that's hot, don't we? Like there's an innate physiological or biological need in human beings that you want to attract a mate that's either as attractive as you or more attractive than you.

Why are we so hung up with looks? Why is it that everybody on the planet, and it's a biological innate need, yeah? It's because a good looking face is typically a healthy face. What characterizes a good looking face? Symmetry, straight nose, broad facial structure, straight teeth, forward growth of the maxilla, forward growth of the mandible, not too forward, of course, a good airway, a good looking face,

is the way nature has intended. That good looking face will have a better airway. That better airway reduces the risk of that person having sleep issues. And if you mate with somebody with a good looking face and those people are healthy, the chances are that the kids are going to be healthy. So there is a reason, you know, this isn't just about the aesthetics. This is going deeper than this. Now I'll give you a story. I don't know which publisher it was when I wrote The Oxygen Advantage. I put a chapter on craniofacial development.

And it was either the US, I'll tell you how you'll know it, whatever book that the chapter is in the appendix, because the book publisher said to me, Patrick, we can't publish this chapter. We can't publish this chapter that you're talking about craniofacial development and breathing. And I said, why? And they said, in quotes, it's going to upset the readers. And I said, this isn't for the readers. This is for the reader's children. So anyway, we reached a compromise.

they threw it into the appendix. So if you're reading the US version of the Oxygen Advantage, and if you see the chapter on craniofacial development in the appendix, you know that there was a little bit of a, I suppose,

a strife in terms of getting that published. What can a person do to, what do you think of mastic gum? What do you think of jaw exercises? What do you think of mewing or, you know, myofunctional therapy? I think they all have a point, you know, but sometimes it's the hype that's around them. And I don't know if the hype is warranted really. Um, I like, I think chewing is really good. I think mewing is really good. I think it can make a difference, but Aaron, um,

we have to be thinking about how is the four-year-old breathing? How is the five-year-old breathing? Like how many times has that been talked about in social media? So we should be thinking about the children who are growing up with their mouths hanging open. Do you know the percentage of kids that are going around with their mouths hanging open? Depending on the study, it could range anything from about 25 to 60% of the kids.

How many children are sleeping with their mouths open? How many adults are sleeping with their mouths open? Typically, it's 50% of the adult population, and that increases with age, and it increases with those with sleep disorders. So yes, I think there is something definitely in it in terms of we can influence some degree of change, but I wouldn't totally rely on it either.

I, but I didn't rely on it. You know, I had a narrow facial structure. Well, you know, I did it because I'd overcrowding of teeth. So because my jaws didn't develop the way they did, because my jaws developed, didn't develop the way they should have. And the reason being is because my tongue wasn't dressing in the roof of the mouth when I was growing up as a kid.

So my max my maxilla, which was my top jaw is very narrow, was very narrow. And as a result, I had overcrowding of teeth, not because my teeth were too big for the job. But the problem was the jaw was too small for the house, all of my teeth. So between Mike Mew and Dr. William Hang, I used appliances at 40 years of age to help develop my maxilla. I didn't rely on nasal breathing with tongue resting posture. I think it has an influence.

People have commented on my face, but I'm not sure if it has the degree of impact that people talk about. But at the same time, I will say this.

It doesn't make sense for anybody, irrespective of age, going around with their mouth open. And it's not just having the mouth open. If you have the mouth open, you have a lower tongue resting posture. And it's not just about nasal breathing. It's having nasal breathing with the tongue resting up against the palate, because that's where the tongue should be. That's what helps to open up the airways. And if you, if anybody wants to make some contribution to craniofacial growth, the tongue needs to be resting up against the palate.

I want to take a moment and share about something I'm incredibly excited about. It is the release of the Align Breathing program. What makes the Align Breathing program different is it actually teaches you how to breathe. Most of the programs and practices and modalities that I see within the breathing space or even yoga or weightlifting or anything that pertains to breath

is there's not much, if any, education on how to breathe, the structure and the mechanics and the function of breathing. If you'd like to learn more about your own breath, I want to invite you guys to take the breathing archetype quiz, where we ask you a few subjective questions and also go through a couple

of breathing exercises for you to have a better understanding of how you breathe and how you can breathe better. The breathing quiz is at alignpodcast.com slash quiz. That's A-L-I-G-N podcast.com slash quiz. I look forward to seeing you guys over there.

And it's not just the, so there's like in, from a mewing perspective, there's the front of the tongue being up on the spot, which I think is the, I think it's the alveolar ridge. I remember correctly is the spot as far as like the name of the bone in the mouth. And then the, um,

back of the tongue ought be like suctioned up to the roof of the mouth or the maxilla. And something that you can do with that is you can say ring as an example to get that to naturally happen. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's a novel concept and idea for most people to suction the back of their tongue to the roof of their mouth. Yeah, like I had a conversation with Karen Samuel back in 2005. I was lucky enough to come across nose breathing in 1998, thereabouts.

And Karen Samuel, she was an older woman, a myofunctional therapist. And I remember sitting down and just a conversation. I said, we talked about Tongue.

And she was saying, well, Patrick, the tongue needs to be in the roof of the mouth. And I asked her the question. I said, how much of the tongue needs to be in the roof of the mouth? And she said three quarters. Now, I never knew that. Number one was my tongue was not in the roof of the mouth. I had trained nasal breathing, but I hadn't trained my tongue. And number two, I had no idea how much of the tongue should be up there. And it was three quarters. So we say, for example, I had kids here.

We had a breathing class here on Saturday and kids arriving, young kids, and I had them do 20 tongue pops. So I often find it's an easier way when they make the tongue pops to kind of get an idea where the correct tongue resting posture should be. And that's when they make the sound like this. Right. So because to make that suction sound, it's important to put the tongue up there and kids will often do that sound anyway.

And then so that the tongue isn't pushing up against the front teeth, because the tongue is a very powerful muscle in the human body. And all it takes to move it to the thing is 1.7 grams. So 1.7 grams of pressure will move teeth. But the tongue is capable of exerting a pressure of 500 grams and possibly even more. So if the tongue is pushing up against the teeth, it can push out the teeth.

So that's why then we talk about the N, N. So in other words, to say N, so yours was ring and this is N. So N is just to get an idea of where should the tongue be in that little ridge. And the other one is to do the tongue pops and that's where your tongue should be resting. Interesting. I feel like I can tongue pop with not suctioning the back of the tongue up to the roof of the mouth. Am I wrong? I can do it just like with the front 20% of it. Yeah, possibly.

I don't know. I have to do an experiment in that iron.

And how much maxillary expansion can a person get without actually getting a expanding device? Like how much expansion can we get just by beginning the process of strengthening our tongue and driving three quarters of it up into the roof of the mouth and finding the spot with the front of the tongue? Like what kind of process are we looking at with that? I don't know.

It's an interesting question. Can we influence? I've never really put it out there. I know it's been out on social media. There's two ways that the maxilla should grow, not just in width. Forward is the key. Because if the maxilla grows forward, it's making more room for the airway. If the maxilla just grows in width, yes, it's widening the width of the face. But is it really...

helping to develop the airway at the same time. So I don't know, you know, how much expansion did I get with William Hang? I can't remember now. Is it five mil or something? You know, so I don't know. And then obviously the younger the person, the more plastic all these structures are. So if you can get your child on this, now we're like working more, you know, we're working with dynamite now, working exponentially. You know, we have to think of all of the factors that contribute to correct craniofacial development.

So if the child is tongue tied, that needs to be looked at the foods that children are eating, whether the child, whether the mom is able to breastfeed or not. And of course, if the child is tongue tied, the child won't be able to feed from the breast because the child simply isn't able to use the tongue adequately to take the milk from the mother. So then the child doesn't try, but the mother is sore because the baby is chomping on the mother.

and then a bottle is introduced. But of course, a bottle, if you give a bottle to an infant, that infant will never go back to the breast because it's easy, easy to suck milk from a bottle. Takes no work. You know, the milk just goes straight down the baby's throat. But it's the real work is happening when the baby's on the breast, because that's also manipulation of the muscles of the face necessary for cranial facial growth.

nasal breathing, of course, reducing any risk of like, say, for example, if a child is sucking their toms or using pacifiers or all of that, just so many different things to go into it. And it's not easy, Aaron, I will say as a parent, I have a child, I went through the whole myofunctional breathing with our child. Was it perfect? Absolutely not.

Was it sometimes a little bit of a battle? Yes, it was. You know, so I could write in the book and say, this is the way to do it. And I say, absolutely, it's the way to do it. But it's not an easy ride. I had to weigh up the what's the alternative that I leave my child with their mouth hanging open with the resultant impact it has on sleep, craniofacial development, physical development, brain development. You know, it is a massive thing.

massive negative to it. And again, you know, like if you look at Karen Bonnock, she's a researcher from New York. She had a paper published in Pediatrics in 2012. She looked at 11,049 British school kids. She tracked these, well not British school kids, British children. She tracked these children from age six months to 57 months. And her conclusion was that if these children have sleep disorder breathing at age five,

If untreated, they had a 40% increased risk of special education needs by age eight. 40% increased risk of special education needs by age eight. Now that's massive. And she talked about what are hallmark things that you need to be looking at with children. Are they mouth breathing? Are they snoring? We should never hear a child snore. We shouldn't even hear a child breathe during sleep. If we hear a child breathe during sleep, it implies that there's resistance to their breathing, that it's a little bit more difficult for air to flow freely.

from the nose into the lungs and vice versa. And the third one, which is the most important one to recognize is, does the child stop breathing for two breaths or more? And you know, 10 to 15% of the childhood population have sleep disorder breathing, between one and 5% of obstructive sleep apnea. Many of them get undiagnosed or they don't get a diagnosis. I would like to keep going down the anatomical track and explore respiratory diaphragm and rib cage

things, rib flare, stuff like that. But something that you just mentioned brings up another question that's been like a head scratcher for me. Increase parts per million of carbon dioxide in the environment reduces test scores and cognitive function, things of the like. Increase carbon dioxide in your bloodstream makes everything work better. How does that work? I haven't squared that one.

God dang it, I thought you were the guy. Yeah, totally. You know, I have one of those monitors here. I put it into a bag. I breathed my own air into it. I tried to monitor. I tried to

And because, you know, the thing about like, is it, is it the higher CO2 in the air? That's the problem. Or is it the fact that the air quality is just poor and it's the higher CO2 that's being picked up on, which does indicate. One isolated variable. Yeah. Correct. So I have. And also the, the, like the inorganicness of, you know, in your body, you're respirating, you're exchanging. Whereas if you're in the room, it's kind of creates like, kind of like a static, like

Yes to that that gas. Yeah, but then there's other people who brought out devices that you are taking carbon dioxide in from the outside in you know You're breathing in carbon dioxide. I was at an event in Austin there about three weeks ago Austin, Texas and I was breathing in carbon dioxide, you know And this was straight out of a device from a soda stream, you know from a little canister now I don't recommend it was going through it was going through and

I can't remember the name of it, but it was going through a unit to measure the dose of carbon dioxide. So, you know, like, I don't know what's going on there, but I don't know if it's fully CO2. I think that just a higher CO2 in the air indicates that the room is stuffy, that the air is poor.

um and instead of blaming it on co2 maybe it should be looking at well the poor the air is poor full stop that's what's causing the problem there could be other variables that we're not yeah i mean that's that's the yeah that's the trouble with science you know as you're being very isolated with the variables that you're able to to control so you might we're like trying to create explanation with explain you know the meaning of that is to flatten out and sometimes things are a lot more

you know round than flat but we try to put definition just so we feel safe and we can understand what about respiratory diaphragm accessing the respiratory diaphragm if a person is say chronically in a a rib flare you know so their ribs are chronically externally rotated and extended that would naturally be the position that the diaphragm would be in when you're inhaling or coming

opening up and extending a little bit and as you're exhaling you're internally rotating and flexing and going through this beautiful motion there's the bucket handle motion and the caliper motion of the lower ribs and you know the upper ribs you know they're going this pump handle thing or kinematics it's this beautiful orchestra of movement that allows your your lungs to be able to be filled with air what happens if a person is chronically in uh a girl is extending her spine forward hyperlordosis she's kind of like you know booty is popping

big proud chest guy chest out and we're kind of permanently stuck in like really good posture but it's like too good to the point that we're stiff and rigid what do you think that what do you think about that as far as from like a respiratory uh conversation if the ribs are chronically stuck in that overextended position do you think about that at all oh the diaphragm has to move freely like if we think of the main breathing muscle and we think about the action of breathing

It's the brain that sends the signal to the diaphragm. When carbon dioxide is increased a little bit in the blood and blood pH is dropped, the signal is sent from the brain to the diaphragm. The diaphragm moves downwards, typically during rest by about two, maybe three centimeters. The intercostals pull out, the thorax gets bigger, so the volume of the chest gets bigger, the pressure inside the chest reduces, and air then is drawn into the lungs.

So every breath that we take is reliant on that action of the diaphragm breathing muscle. Now, of course, with every breath that we take, we do have movement of the diaphragm. But the question is how much? And if we have a tendency to suck in the stomach and if we have a tendency to breathe more using the upper chest, but reduced recruitment of the diaphragm, then we have to think about the knock on effects. Now, mouth breathing also will cause more upper chest breathing and upper chest breathing typically is faster. It can be harder. It can be irregular.

But let's look at the diaphragm. How many functions does the diaphragm have?

many many functions you know in terms of stabilization of the spine it's known that 50 percent of people with lower back pain have poor breathing from a diaphragmatic point of view is it the lower back pain that's causing dysfunctional breathing or is it the dysfunctional breathing which is causing lower back pain or both who knows we're not going to be able to they're going to have compromised pressure they're not going to be able to create appropriate intra-abdominal pressure yeah it's like thinking like a cut like a coke can if you crack a coke can and on the side and

and you put downward pressure on it, it'll collapse and break. So if you have that collapse happening, you're creating these subtle little moments of tension or bracing throughout the day, thousands of different times. But if you're not able to do that ever due to the mechanics, it would be a problem. Yeah, no, totally. So yeah, as there is a negative pressure in the chest during inspiration, there's a positive pressure in the abdomen. Josephine Key wrote a very good article

And she was talking about a good gauge of the generation of intra-abdominal pressure is that when we breathe in, that we can push the lower ribs out. And as we breathe out, that the lower ribs are moving in. And I think it's important to distinguish between that and belly breathing, because very often people will talk about belly breathing. And as you breathe in, the belly should be moving out. And as you breathe out, the belly should be moving in, like in truth.

as the diaphragm moves downwards, we have 360 movement. We have some movement to the sides, some movements to the back, some movement to the front. And just focusing on the belly

One may be pushing and pulling the belly irrespective of breathing. So, you know, there can be some confusion there. But the diaphragm is connected with the emotions, lymphatic drainage, massaging the internal organs, increasing venous return to the heart. When we breathe with good recruitment of the diaphragm, we're taking the air into the lower regions of the lungs. There's a better gas exchange. There's so much going on. So, yeah, focusing on the diaphragm and improving both the function and the strength of the diaphragm is very important. There's two things there.

Now, we use a range of different breathing exercises with that, but we don't have the full story. You know, we will also have to work with a physiotherapist or a physical therapist or somebody who is hands on. We are hands off. So we teach breathing exercises. We do switch to nasal breathing, which typically has a better recruitment of the diaphragm than mouth breathing. We also improve breathing from a biochemical point of view, because I suppose I'm going to say this. If you feel that you're not getting enough air,

you're going to revert naturally to upper chest breathing to compensate for the feeling of air hunger. So why is the person breathing upper chest in the first place? Could they have faulted to mouth breathing? And sometimes there's only one paper on this, but I have always asked my students, I say to them, look down at your chest, take the breath through the mouth,

When you breathe through your open mouth, you typically see that you're engaging more of the upper chest. And if we have chronic mouth breathing, and especially during rest to exercise during sleep, we're engaging more of the upper chest and we have reduced recruitment of the diaphragm. Nasal breathing is the foundation to targeting the diaphragm. The second aspect is to improve the breath hold time.

Because we know also that people with a lower breath hold time, a lower control pause or bold score, they typically are breathing in the upper chest. Now, you know, so I don't have the perfect solution, Aaron. You know, like I often get my students, I feel some of the best ways to help improve the function and strength of the diaphragm is actually do their physical exercise with them out closed.

Whatever physical exercise they can do, start off with walking. The reason being is you're breathing in and out through the nose. Yes, direct your attention to breathing lower.

But do it in a very natural way, not to over-breathe. What we want to do is we want to increase the range of motion of the diaphragm. You're naturally going to increase it when you are breathing during physical exercise with your mouth closed, with your attention on the diaphragm. So we use a belt. Some people, we have the belt across their chest to drive breathing to the lower. And other people, we have the belt in the midriff, and that is to bring their attention

to the area of the midriff. So as they're breathing in, they can feel their body is pushing against the belt. And as they breathe out, they feel the belt, it's an elasticated belt, it's kind of stretchable. You know, it was based on the work of Dr. Buteyko. And the whole point there is to help prop your reception because some people are simply not aware of their breathing. Now, you know, in terms of the manipulation, you're going to have more tools than we have there.

So yes, the biomechanics of breathing is vitally important. Now, what do I focus on? If I have a client coming in and they're breathing very much upper chest, yes, of course,

I will focus on the diaphragm, but more often than not, I actually focus on the biochemical dimension. I try and get nasal breathing right first. Then I try to improve the biochemical dimension. And then what I do is I want to work in the biomechanical dimension. Now that's the sequence that I do. Whereas somebody who is hands-on, they may focus on the biomechanical dimension first.

But at the same time, it's important not to forget about the biochemical dimension or the psychophysiological dimension or nasal breathing versus mouth breathing. I'm really excited to, I mean, if you're willing to check it out, I'm excited to send you the Align Your Breathing program. Totally. That's the whole intention of creating it was to the whole first section of it is all around just restoring mechanics.

If a person's not, if they're not able to actually access the range of motion within the ribs or the diaphragms chronically stuck in a certain position, then everything upstream and downstream from that's going to be compromised. Um,

The, all right, is there a camp? I asked you a couple of little like, like, uh, social media, short pithy kind of questions. Yes. All right, here we go. I've got a couple, a couple ones right now. Uh, what is the single biggest breathing mistake? 99% of people are making every day. Patrick, take a deep breath. What does it mean? You know, how is it interpreted? Why do people say it? Do they understand what it means? What is the word deep means far from the top. It's not big.

Many people, they're told to take a deep breath and what to do? That's not a deep breath. That's a shallow breath. That's a fast breath. That's a big breath. And that will do the very thing that you don't want to happen. If you want to stress yourself out, don't breathe fast, shallow and big. Breathe deep, not big.

And breathing deep would be through the nose, down, expanding in the lower ribs, horizontally breathing, breathing three-dimensionally into the back. What does breathing deep look like? So breathing deep simply means breathing far from the top so that you have a good range of the diaphragm. And the diaphragm is feeling moving. So during inspiration, in through the nose, your diaphragm is moving downwards,

And that in turn will cause some movement to the front sides and back. And then during expiration, which is passive to die from is moving back up to a stressing position. And as a result, then you have the inward inward return of the ribs. So that's what the word deep means. But you can do it and nose silent deep breath is probably one of the best breaths that we can do. But it's not going to get much attention on social media because people love to see the bigger the better.

So when you're just breathing something that's doing something that's so subtle, but this is a tremendous little tool to have, especially when you're going into a challenging situation. You know, you're going into a challenging situation. You're feeling that your heart rate is ramped up a little bit. You're feeling that you're under a little bit of stress, but you're afraid of going maybe that the stress is going to be too much because that's going to sabotage your performance.

So how can you tell your brain that you're safe going into that situation? Take a soft breath in through your nose and have a slow, relaxed and gentle breath out. And at the same time as you're breathing in and breathing out, that you have good recruitment of the diaphragm.

That way you tell the brain that you're safe. Nobody will see anything and you'll be able to bring down your heart rate and hold your attention of what you're doing. If you were designing a breathing protocol for focus, libido and improved sleep, would it all be the same style of breathing? And what would that style of breathing be? Okay, so libido and improved sleep, we have to focus on your everyday breathing patterns because ultimately your libido

your ability to perform is going to be influenced by your sleep. If, for example, you have sleep disorder breathing, if you're stopping breathing during sleep, for example, when a man wakes up in the morning, that man should wake up with an erection. If the man is not waking up with an erection in the morning,

specifically called morning wood it indicates that there could be something going on with the blood vessels so it's pointing to something else and i am 51 years of age and it's not pointing that's the problem that's it but you know it's so common and it's a conversation that doesn't happen

So if breathing is poor, sleep can be poor. So if that individual is going to bed at night and if they're breathing through an open mouth and they're breathing fast and they're breathing shallow and they're snoring and stopping breathing during sleep, well, I'm afraid it's just not going to work for them. So how do you improve that? All about functional breathing, not necessarily having to do long breath tools, not doing the stressor exercise. You don't need them. Think of the basics.

So, because the other thing about focus, like how do you focus if you've got poor sleep? If you, if any of us are in dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, if we're in an increased stress response, it sabotages flow. And if we say we can't put flow and focus in the same, you know, in the same category.

Focus can determine like, okay, you're going to have a narrow focus, but what are you going to do today, you can have a broad focus where you're choosing to hold your attention on over the next three to five years. But maybe we think of focus in terms of attention span, your ability to hold your attention on what you're doing right now.

And to hold your attention on what you're doing, you need to have good sleep because you need energy. And you also need to have good control over the mind. You don't want to be bombarded with thoughts coming in because if you are bombarded with thoughts, well, then there's so much internal distraction going on that you're not going to have the ability to hold your attention on what you're doing. And if you can't hold your attention on what you're doing, you're not going to achieve any great quality of work.

How can you? Because in order to achieve a good quality of work, you have to put your attention there. So I think this goes full circle. All of those are related. So when you think about focus, you think about sleep, you think of libido, you would say, well, how are they related? Nervous system regulation, being able to dampen the stress response and bring balance to the autonomic nervous system, you know, being able to optimize your heart rate variability, being able to optimize your sleep.

And that will come with nasal breathing, with light breathing, with slow breathing, with deep breathing. I use the acronym LSD. People remember it, you know, and that way then you can, yes, the basics, you know, the basics are very important. They're often forgotten about.

but they are very, very important. What separates elite performers such as people you work with, Olympians, Navy SEALs, people of the sort, what separates the way that they breathe compared to the average human being? You know, we've seen athletes with poor breathing win medals. You know, that's undoubtedly true. I see it a lot, actually. We have to ask at what cost and could you do it a bit easier?

You know, breathing is the one thing that people often overlook in their training. You think of an athlete in the gym, how many of those athletes are actively working on their breathing? And if they are doing breathing exercises, what are they doing? Is it just hyperventilation? Is it hyperventilation and long breath tools? But how are they breathing in their normal everyday life? How well are they breathing from a biochemical, a biomechanical and psychophysiological point of view? How well are they breathing during sleep?

So, like, if you were to ask what does it mean in terms of breathing to help improve performance, I think the biggest thing is the capacity to be able to direct your attention to where you want to direct it upon. How many of these athletes halfway through the game, if their mind wanders, that's one aspect of it. Can you train your brain to hold attention? You can use the breath. You hold your attention on the breath first. It's not just about directing your attention to the breath.

you need to be able to quieten the mind, reduce brain cell excitability, increase blood flow to the brain, increase oxygen delivery to the brain, improve sleep, balance the autonomic nervous system. So that's in terms of mental performance. And then the other aspect, of course, is physical performance. Are you able to run and do your physical exercise but reduce ventilation? And if you practice nasal breathing, we did a 5K challenge just a short while ago

I think 2000 people participated in it. This was a 5K challenge with nasal breathing. You know, you would think this so, so obvious or, you know, so simple. Breathe through your nose during physical exercise. It can do so much more that your mouth doesn't do. There's nothing in your mouth to serve any purpose for breathing. Nothing. You know, what is in your mouth? Our teeth, our tongue, our gums, our palate, our soft palate, saliva,

Not a whole lot else. What do those things do? Well, there's nothing there for breathing. They're for eating, for speaking, for drinking, for social bonding, not for breathing. Everything for breathing is inside the nose. And yet most athletes will spend not just during competition. I want to get the point across. This isn't just saying sprint with your mouth closed. No, no, no.

This is about doing your warm up with your mouth closed. This is about doing the zone one and zone two, the low to moderate intensity stuff with your mouth closed. And then as you train your breathing patterns, you can go into the higher intensity with your mouth closed because now you're making your body an efficient machine. And ultimately, why waste energy? You train your legs, you train your arms. Do you train your brain? Do you train your breathing? How do you train your breathing?

So there's a lot more to train, but you don't have to do anything new because my quest has always been, you know, I've worked enough with clients to know that it's difficult for clients to put into practice. I want to make their physical training, not just a training for the body. Their physical training is a training for the brain. Their physical training is a training for their breathing.

then there's nothing new to do. Do you believe dysfunctional breathing is the root cause for ADHD, anxiety, and insomnia? It's a significant contributory factor, you know, like you can argue that some people are going to be born with ADHD. And, you know, there's a genetic component there. And this is a difficult enough question to answer, because what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Most of these groups of people that you mentioned there have poor breathing patterns.

Is it that they may have been born genetically predisposed to ADHD? They have poor breathing, but they also have poor sleep. Or is it that they had poor breathing and poor sleep that brought on the symptoms that resemble these conditions or feed into these conditions? And I know there's probably going to be some people that would say that ADHD is solely caused by poor sleep. And ADHD can be, and anxiety, you know, is going to be

I would agree in terms of contributed to by poor breathing patterns. All I'm going to say is this, Aaron, if somebody has ADHD and if somebody has anxiety and if somebody has mental health problems, breathing and sleep are two key components, but oftentimes are overlooked. You know, they go to their psychologist, they go to their psychiatrist, they go to their psychotherapist.

They're doing cognitive behavioral therapy. They're taking medication. You know, even for people with insomnia, 8.4% of the USA population take sleeping pills. That's to quieten the mind. And, you know, can we have other tools in terms of helping to quieten the mind? All of the tools that we talked about here.

Does it make sense to improve these people's sleep and to improve their breathing patterns, knowing that they typically do have poor sleep and poor breathing? There's always an association between mental health problems, poor breathing and poor sleep. I'm not going to say it's ever 100%, but I'm going to say it's pretty strong. We see depression and obstructive sleep apnea is so common. How is the incidence of obstructive sleep apnea so high in depression, higher than the normal population?

What's causing what? Is it obstructive sleep apnea, which is feeding into depression? Is it depression feeding into obstructive sleep apnea? And the problem here is that you will often have a crossover of symptoms because if one is depressed or feeling flash, they have difficulty concentrating, they're irritable and they're fatigued. But if one is having sleep apnea, you feel flash. You have difficulty concentrating, you're feeling fatigued, you're irritable. So that person goes to their doctor

Is their doctor going to pick up on whether the person has depression? Or is the doctor going to pick up on whether the person has sleep apnea? Or is the doctor going to pick up on both? This is the human body. We have to look at the interrelationship and the interconnectedness between one and the other. One is feeding into the other. And all three things there go together. The mind, breathing, and sleep. You can't separate one from the other. If one is off, the other is off. Yeah, I've been reading, I've been re-

uh, acquainting myself with yoga. I'm reading the yoga sutras right now. And I'm observing in that. I posted a thing on my Instagram today that it's like, I'm, I'm realizing this is like a medical textbook.

And it's very thorough in that it's covering the psychoneuroendocrinological, you know, the psychobiological aspect. And it's covering the movement aspect, like the mechanical aspect. And it's covering the respiratory aspect and pranayama and such.

And it's also going in, it's going into, I guess, the psycho part, going into like cleaning up your life from the inside out and cleaning up the chatter within your mind and within yourself. And it's really truly is a holistic lens on medicine, which is cool. Why do you think we skewed away from medicine?

that like a holistic lens on now we're, I think, I think cultures were coming back to it. And I think conversations like this is an example of that, but I feel like there was a little bit of a split and then almost like a disrespect of like, like scientism,

has a little bit of like a condescension energy towards those realms. But the way that when, as I'm listening to it or reading it, I'm like, oh, this is really intelligent. I'm not sure. I think humans don't necessarily do a good job. They split the human body into different parts. I think they had a vested interest. You know, you have very powerful individuals and powerful entities, and it's very easy to put out information. You know, we would say we would call it fake news nowadays, but maybe fake news is going on a hundred years ago.

And it's very easy to vilify a traditional route if you have the money and the power to influence it. So humans are greedy. Yeah, when you have something that you're attempting to sell suddenly, and that's like with breathing, the way that you breathe, the way that you live your life. Well, the only thing is with breathing, I'm going to say that you're not going to be a massive multinational corporation.

Yeah, exactly. You might earn an income. You create a movement. You can create like a tribe and culture, which is cool. But yeah, there's not an immense amount of ad spend and like get more sunshine or take your shoes off, go hang out in the woods. It makes sense. I also think that the industry has really let itself down. I think the breathing industry is so powerful. And I really think that

The way it was often presented was not in a way that was going to help it become mainstream. It was carrying too much left of field connotations, too many people pulling things out of thin air and making claims that were not necessarily supportive. You know, it wasn't communicated in a language. I'm not a left of field person at all.

I fell into breathing. You know, I was lucky I had poor health. I had something I had to do something about. I went through conventional medicine for 25, 26 years. It helped, but it wasn't, you know, it didn't give me what breathing has given me. And the, you know, I can say from 25 years of putting this into practice, even on a personal basis,

There's nothing left to feel about this. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you. I really enjoyed this conversation a lot. I really appreciate it. I've already blown smoke up your ass previously. You have a really deep oceanic childlike energy to you, which is nice. Like you, like I can tell in talking to you that there's a lot of both, a lot of depth. And I think within that depth, my experience, perhaps projection is this, um,

kind of awareness that this is just a dream and this is a game. And, you know, it's like you have a playfulness in the way that you communicate and you also have a tremendous amount of depth simultaneously is my, the way that I experienced you. So I really appreciate you and yeah, just the way you show up as a person. What do you think about that? I think you've just blown some more smoke up my ass. Yeah. Is that a line? Oh, good. I don't know. You know, I was lucky. I found something that really

fitted my skill set. I love to work. And it just makes it that bit easier. You know, I found something, but also I found something that works. Now you have somebody else taking attention. So no longer am I going to be the center of attention. Now he's making her, she's making herself known. Yeah, I was lucky how many people we go through life. And it was intuitive as well. They kind of got me into it. And the whole aspect of being able to

bringing quietness to the mind and use all of this stuff for myself. I think it's huge. So yeah, I'm lucky.

Whatever you're doing is working. I really appreciate you. We'll stick with that. So Aaron. So people can, if they want to go deeper into your work, which I'd recommend, and I reference you very regularly and all the stuff that I do. So people probably already heard, heard about you through that. But how can people go deeper into your stuff? We have a channel for physical and mental performance and that's all Oxygen Advantage. So Oxygen Advantage, the website and Instagram, YouTube. There's also an app.

And it's free. Everything inside of it is free. And then we have for health, it's Buteyko Clinic. So that's for people with asthma or sleep or anxiety. And both website, Instagram, YouTube, and a smaller app. Amazing. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. That's it. That's all. I will see you all next week. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. I want to invite you over to the Align Podcast YouTube channel if you want to see the quality of both of our skins IRL.

or as close to IRL as you can on the internet with video and check it out, subscribe, leave comments. I love reading the comments over there. And also if you have interest in improving the quality of your skin, they did give us a discount code at OneSkin, which was kind of them. You go to oneskin.co slash align. I believe you get 15% off your order.

which is pretty cool. So if you want to try it out and get yourself a discount, jump over to their one skin.co slash align. I appreciate y'all. That's it. That's all. I'll see you next week.