How to Breathe Better for Peak Performance | Brian Mackenzie | Align Podcast #527
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Welcome back to the Lyme podcast. My name is Aaron Alexander. Today's episode is with my good friend, Brian McKenzie. Brian is an innovator in human performance on stress adaptation, and he's a pioneer in the development and application of custom protocols to optimize human health and performance. He is a absolute legend in the world of endurance training and respiration, i.e. breathing. This conversation is a deep dive into how to breathe better. Some of the

common mistakes people make with breathing and do not even realize it. And also some of the mistakes people are making when they are intentionally doing things like breathing practices, and they could be exacerbating issues just because they don't have the proper training on how to do so. We are taking on average around 20,000 breaths per day. Each one of those breaths affects every aspect of our physiology and our mental emotional state.

we can regulate our mental emotional state as well as our physiology by regulating our breath that's what this conversation is about and that is also what the align breathing program is about which i am over the top excited to finally be launching and releasing i think it is the best most comprehensive breathing program on the internet

I'm sure I'm not supposed to say that, but I've looked at most of them. And what I really value about the Align Breathing program is it is truly comprehensive in that it focuses on the mechanics of breathing first and then goes into calming or down regulation and then goes into stimulating or up regulation and also has a brief overview of the anatomy and physiology of breathing. A great starting point for you guys, if you want to learn more about your own breath, is to take the breathing archetype quiz to determine whether you are a, what we refer to as a stressed breath.

survivor or if you are an air alchemist or something in between these are the names that we determine for people who are doing really well with their breath or could use a little bit of work

So if you want to see where you lie on the breathing archetype quiz, you can go to alignpodcast.com slash quiz, and you will start the breathing archetype quiz. It only takes a few minutes and you will learn truly a significant amount about yourself. There are a few subjective questions we ask and then a couple of breathing tests. So

So check that out online podcast.com slash quiz and get your breathing archetype and then learn a little bit more about yourself. That is it. That's all. Let's get to it with the man, Brian McKenzie. Why is it that breathing affects one state of consciousness more

so deeply and quickly and with such great efficiency and consistency? Well, a number of reasons, but one of the main being the fact that we're largely controlling carbon dioxide with breathing, although you're bringing in oxygen as well, and that's important. 80% of that oxygen is roughly offloaded

at rest. So when we're not working, when we're not doing something, a lot of that oxygen is not necessary. That being said, the CO2 actually is, and that is one of the big drivers of things. But from a biochemical standpoint, CO2 regulates pH. So

That is essentially what's really the big player in regulating pH real time. Yes, the kidneys play a role in that and there's a lot of other processes, but the major player with breathing is that it's going to, it's a respondent to pH. And if I change that pH, things start to change, the dynamics start to change, right? And as CO2 goes up, more oxygen comes off, comes out and is usable.

- From hemoglobin, from red blood cells. It liberates them. - It liberates that. So then you've got, if you've got functional mitochondria, you then get that oxygen down to the electron transport chain

And you're now pumping that out. The better you get at this, and as I used Irwan, this was his opening protocol. When you get to his level of breath hold, you don't even necessarily need to be his level. But the reality is that

When you get to, you know, you can hold your breath for a significant amount of time. What you're doing is training your mitochondria to use less oxygen for more ATP. This is done. They looked at this at a study done. I think it was in Sweden, but it's called the tortoise and the hare.

And in the lab, these guys had a professional triathlete, an elite triathlete and an elite freediver who were both in the lab at the same time who were PhD students, I guess, or master's students. And they decided to take a look at

the differences in them and how they used oxygen. And of course, the triathlete being elite used it real well from a VO2 standpoint and all of these things. It had a much larger aerobic threshold than the actual freediver. However, once they came into this conclusion about the less oxygen for more ATP, they were like, oh, well, there's the other side of aerobic we haven't been looking at.

So there's high benefit in being able to hold one's breath, but you don't necessarily need to become...

a free diver or breath hold expert in order to get these benefits um you know most people are over breathing which is you're just off you're just offloading co2 um as a result of that over breathing even a slight bit and that means you're just not getting as much of that oxygen off that envelope and what is co2 has largely been villainized historically for most basic people

Is a waste product. Yeah, and oxygen. So oxygen good, CO2 bad, get the CO2 out, get the oxygen. That's obviously wildly incorrect and excessively basic and just flawed. Actually, it's kind of reversed. So oxygen is a useless, destructive molecule without... No, literally...

Like it worked. We're literally getting oxidized from the inside free radicals. Like I you've heard of it oxidation, like your car, you know, you go look at a car that's being oxidized. That's a part of like, like hyperbaric chambers. It's you're pushing oxygen deeper, which is actually creating a hermetic stressor. That's like a part of the organization of stem cells. You're actually challenging your body. Oxygen.

important because of aerobic cellular respiration in that oxygen's role is to regulate the cabinets right where co2 is there to regulate biochemically pH right and so they work together but you know as you explain you know lots of people like to go in hyperbaric chambers and they don't actually understand why they're going in there they're actually creating a very stressful response that

that they rebound from and a hormetic effect that inevitably has a very positive response after about 20 sessions. Can turn some things on and get some things boosted as a result. But make no mistake, you are stressing the hell out of your system as you're doing it.

Could you outline some of the benefits you already have a little bit, but go a little bit deeper into some of the benefits of CO2 that people might not recognize or realize? Something like the effects that people experience by having CO2 in their system? Yeah. I mean, it's going to create a common effect before, you know, like 60s, probably before even the 60s. But I mean, I even remember in the 80s that, you know, people who, the rare panic attack that happened, people were given a paper bag to break.

to breathe, rebreathe into. You're just basically rebreathing CO2 and that creates a calming effect, right? Because the more CO2 that's in the bloodstream, you're actually starting to vasodilate things. The nervous system's responding by coming, calming down, becoming more parasympathetically driven. You know, and that's, that's essentially why we were really designing or the respiratory system

the pulmonary system was designed with the nose in mind and not necessarily the mouth for most of breathing, right? That nose has intricate processes set up. And one of them is it retards how much air can come out. And by that, you're getting a good dosing of CO2. Whereas as I speak or you speak, arousal starts to shift and that CO2 starts to drop.

So I start to use more glucose. I start to move, you know, I'm moving into more of an activated state, which is natural. However, that's what I'm doing all day long. Where am I? Where are those changes coming in to where I'm not? And that's where the regulation of breathing and CO2 essentially start to come in where

um you know people who who aren't mouth breathers tend to be a little bit calmer it's interesting how it seems confusing i just had i was just did a podcast with robert sapolsky the why zebras don't get ulcers guy yeah a couple days ago and that was i had some questions for him in relation to like what's the evolutionary or adaptive quality

of certain things like people, you know, he's like baboons and certain primates and humans end up having too much time on their hands. And then they end up being like evil to each other and destructive to each other. So the questions of like, why is that an adaptive quality and strategy? And how has that managed to persist in evolution? I wonder with breathing, kind of similar type style question, bad breathing, and anxiety, and maybe a higher proclivity towards

reactivity or anger outbursts and things of the sort will end up actually perpetuating more bad breathing, which bad breathing being like maybe mouth breathing or emphasis on exhalation or faster breathing or excessive dumping of CO2, making you be more stingy with holding onto oxygen and a less efficient mobilizer of oxygen just generally puts you in a place of feeling like you're kind of

suffocating on yourself in a way. And you kind of literally are. That seems contradictory to me that evolution would permit that. Do you know what I'm saying? No, I know. Cause I, I get it. And I'll, I'll, I'll kind of, this is great question. So, but,

Or great statement. It's not that I, I understand what you're saying. However, I've spent so much time in this that I've got a pretty good handle on what I think is the reasoning, you know, what, what happens. And did I outline that question appropriately? Was there anything that I said in there that was like, that should be cleared up or was that an appropriate way of asking? No, no, no. I was very, no, no, no. Very appropriate. I'm just, I'm, I was tickled that you asked because

Uh, you know, it's interesting cause I was just speaking with, uh, professor Steve Peters and you know who he is? No. So he wrote, uh, the chip model for, uh, brain, I think. And now his newest book is, uh, the, a path through the jungle. The dude is on a level. Um, he, he,

He lives in, he's English, but I have never heard anybody explain. He's a psychiatrist by trade, but he explains the neuroscience of everything. And this is where, why it got so interesting to me is because he started explaining the

This chip model of the brain and how we've got two, we've got three teams, right? And one team is the kind of, it works off an emotional response. And then there's a logical reaction that kind of tells a story to validate that emotional response. And this is how children grow. And this is child mind.

And then it has an action next to it, right? And that action feeds team three, which is a program, okay? The second team is the logical brain or the human brain. So that first team is the chimp model. The second team is the human model where logic is the basis of things. Reality is the basis of things. Then there's an emotional response. Then there's an action towards that. But either one of these feeds that system, right?

down to team three or the program okay so the program wires up based on how you're going right and team one the chip model is not bad and team two is not good they're both good they're both there for a reason you're there to survive we're here to survive and we should honor how we decided to move through the world how we grew up and how those responses came in etc etc anyway

When he got into this stuff, he started talking about that emotional model and the limbic system because that's where it really functions. And in the limbic system is the amygdala. So we understand that there is this little, you know, almond shaped thing that is like the fear center of the brain. A good friend of mine did some research where he figured out the, he, I think the paper was titled, um,

forget what it's titled, but it's about what he found with the amygdalas that is it is a modulator of CO2 as well. So for those of us that are a little bit more less emotionally developed, we tend to become more reactive. And when we become more reactive, our nervous system is a bit more hot. When our nervous system is hot, you can

bet you will become more co2 in coloring so meaning aaron got stressed out which aaron doesn't get too stressed out but let's just pretend he did and i said aaron hold your breath versus if aaron were calm hold your breath yeah two very different breath holds co2 being the main mechanism and driver for why you would need feel the urge to breathe right you understand that pretty intimately so

that modulator gets involved with things, especially for those of us that are wired up in certain ways or just are more reactive or talk a lot more or, um, you know, our mouth breathers by nature, you end up retarding this process and then you become sensitive to its change because the nervous system's running pretty hot as a result because it,

biochemically speaking, you're moving the needle over to say, oh, not enough, not as much oxygen available. No problem. We'll move into more sympathetic survival mode, which provides more glucose, glycolysis, et cetera. So I just run up here on carbohydrate most of the day.

And I don't, you know, my mitochondria are not as functional, right? In terms of where I would be utilizing. And that doesn't just mean we're not using carbohydrates with mitochondria, et cetera, because we oxidize, right? We're just not oxidizing as much because we don't have that availability.

So the, the, the system has a very easy long-term way of managing. It just uses more glucose, right? And it just happens quicker. It's not that we're not using oxygen since you're not using it well. And so that's,

state becomes chronic stress is what we see and that sensitized chronic stress you could look at most people who deal with chronic stress have some form of chronic anxiety they're also dealing with or depression which are same same just different modes of how you're operating with it

Without a doubt, we've seen that people are CO2 intolerant or more CO2 intolerant who are anxious. Could you say a little bit more about the relationship of the amygdala and the CO2? Is that like a downstream effect because of upregulation of?

the amygdala is causing the nervous system and the respiratory system to go into more of like a hyperventilatory state. Therefore, correct. The downstream effect is off gassing CO2, or is it more intimately and closely related than that? Yeah, correct. Yeah. It is that downstream side of things. You know, however, when I talk about, Oh,

you know, my run, my nervous system is now running hot. Well, you're a high stress individual. So now what you're doing is, you know, if we look at like HRV, your HRV is low. So the beats between the heartbeats aren't as far apart and you know, your chemo receptors are on alert because you're in a predictive system. So you've got chemo receptors off the aortic arch, the carotid arch, the carotid artery. So you're talking about a predictive system.

And when you look at the predictive system, you then can get into free energy principle, which is, well, yeah, everything's kind of off of a prediction that I've predicted how my day is going to go. I've gotten in a car to go somewhere. I don't predict there's going to be an accident. So any sort of thing that gets in the way of that sets me off. And if I'm somebody who gets set off really easy, that predictive system is a mess, right? Well, those chemoreceptors that are picking things up are now on a hot,

nervous system. So I'm in a nervous system that's set up on a high sympathetic drive to be on alert and not be able to manage things. So then I'm just more secured up to be driven into reactive mode where I'm in that limbic system, where I'm in that emotional system, trying to validate the problems that I have by not looking at where they originated from, which is myself in most cases.

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Yeah. That's that. I think that that's like the bridge between the mind body conversation. I think it's really interesting. And I'm like the, the, if there is some type of internal impression, you know, or trauma unprocessed aspect of yourself or event or experience within your life, that could be like a, a smoldering ember deep within your subconscious, you know, and you keep on addressing all of the smoke that's arising and you temporarily be like, Oh cool. I feel better. Cause I did this breathing practice. I'm downregulated temporarily. Right.

or I did this psychedelic thing, or I had sex, or I had this dopaminergic response from, you know, whatever the thing is. I'm like, Oh, I'm temporarily. Okay. But you haven't actually addressed the smoldering part. And then simultaneously you can use the breathing tools, tools in order to downregulate the system enough to be able to develop clarity, to actually do the work, to assess the smoldering Ember. Does that make sense? And then, so just how do we, how do we do that? Because I think that's what we're trying to do.

Yeah. You know, I think fundamentally people have to start to look. I mean, here's what I've done and the people that I've worked with do. You know, a lot of them is if you're not willing to look at your experiences a bit differently, meaning you may be.

That wasn't exactly how it went. Or maybe there's another way to look at this, you know, then you're, you're pretty fucked. Excuse my language. Yeah. Or just if you're, if you're not, if you're not willing to take yourself out of like a victim kind of mindset, I think it's like stasis.

Yeah, you're like if you're just so queued up that you had this torturous childhood that, you know, maybe you did. However, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are a survivor. You are here now and you are listening. And if you're listening to this, you're on the Internet, you're on something and you're living a pretty decent life.

So you can do it. I promise you. I'm a bit more direct than most people with this stuff because I'm not a therapist and I'm like, hey, you're either going to address this or you're not. And if you're not going to really start to address this and you continue down this path, the work we're doing isn't going to work because we're

You cannot just apply breathing methods and hope you're going to, all the pain is going to go away. You're just using another addiction for something. Just fill in a void.

that isn't, you know, fillable. What would be the, cause I think there are mechanical levers that a person could start to pull. A hundred percent. Here's how I look at it. It's like, Hey, let's, let's, let's go over to that model that like Steve Peters created. Let's, let's just say I'm in this emotional state where I don't like he created this model is brilliant. It's like, you don't like how you feel. If you don't like how you behave or you don't like what you think, guess where you're at. You're inside that chair. Okay. Yeah.

So if you've got anything going on there, that is the perfect opportunity to introduce some breathing of some sort to bring you down to a level to be able to calm down enough to

to say to yourself, what is the truth or what is the reality about what it is I'm feeling right? Is this person who cut me off in traffic, were they out to get me or maybe they're just in a rush and I can let this go. I don't know, whatever you're fucking, whatever you're dealing with, right? Like, you know, the deal that you were supposedly going to close for millions of dollars or, you know, the job you were going to get. I understand that that was, you know, that's difficult.

But are you capable of lacing up your shoes tomorrow and going after something else and finding something else creative in your life in order to, yeah, because you've made it this far. So yes, you are. So if you can really look at that and go, oh, okay. But breathing's the tool to kind of get you out of where you don't like what you're feeling and relax.

you know, in that with what you said earlier, it's like, you know, you got this victim. So if you're ever the victim, you're in the, you're, you're, you're on the wrong side of the tracks. I think you're just in stasis. I think it's, I think victim and stasis are synonymous. It's fine. But just know that you will not grow from there. It's fine. Just know that you're in a pause state for as long as you choose to be in that victim space. And it's fine. Be there for 20 years. It's fine. Just, just stay put. Yeah. Yeah.

no big deal just nothing will change i'm really good with my life and i you know we just won't be close we won't be having any problems it's awesome um

Breathing is something that I'm curious from your perspective and experience with in relation to breathing and mechanics. I feel like mechanics is something that's not spoken about that much. It's a lot about breathing practices and do a five, seven, eight or do a box breathing or do a Wim Hof or do a holotropic or do this. And there's I don't hear very much other than like postural restoration breathing.

institute which is super complex and hard for any even super smart person to understand um you know so within these conversations are there some aspects of the physical meat suit that you would recommend people being able to start to work on within themselves be like oh actually just like you need to shift some things mechanically within your shoulders or your diaphragm or your pelvic floor or your tongue or your

you know, nasal passages, whatever. How do we start from, from the mechanics of the physical body to be able to naturally breathe better? The easiest way to do it without having me or you there for somebody is to really go, you know, go somewhere on YouTube and start to look for some core exercises or go look at somebody like a star at who's going over movement principles and

And like for complex movements, like a squat or a hang or like a press, right? Like you're overhead with a press. Like here's something for people. Like you go and press overhead, just take a 45 pound dumbbell or bar. Dumbbells are going to be far more challenging, right? Take a bar and go overhead. Shut your mouth and go end to end nose only breathing.

right you're going to start to figure out how how non-integrated your core actually is because how much your diaphragm actually should is integrated into the core complex in fact i'm of the mindset it is the epicenter of the core complex because the moment that diaphragm is out of place breathing gets very difficult right maybe you don't start with a press overhead maybe you go online

Find some videos or some tutorials from some experts on movement standards for some complex movements. Go get into those positions. Shut your mouth. Can you go end to end from your nose for five to 10 breaths and just hold it? That will tell you how you're set up with that diaphragm real quick.

and the intercostals per se. I don't want to leave the intercostals out because the intercostals and the diaphragm work together. It's not a separate thing. Those two muscle groups work together to move that cage open. From there, it becomes secondary where you're talking about things, you know, pecs that come off, the neck muscles, et cetera. Then things start to grab. You want to make sure those secondary muscles work

aren't first things to ground when you're doing these things. If they are the first things to, when I breathe, then we definitely want to address this. And this is where it's like getting into those positions and try that. You know, I go to the extremes of getting people with some resistance breathing devices that are fairly cheap and easy to get to where we really train people

you know, the strength of these things, um, to challenge people, but we don't do all a ton of it. We do some of it as some auxiliary work. And then it's like, I move more into like breathing gear work with, you know, warm up and, and designed cardio or aerobic work that we implement the breathing gears into, um,

And what would be the, I mean, this might be kind of a variable question, but what would be the ideal sequence of breathing through the rib cage and the torso and the whole chest cavity? If you were to start breathing,

a breath and inhalation from full evacuation. What should that look like? What are cues that we could be feeling into? And how would that, how would that look in an ideal world? If this is the bottom of your rib cage, right? Your ribs, this thing goes out like that. Most people are caught or here. They should, their belly should live. You should feel the air into your back first. That doesn't mean the belly doesn't move.

But we're talking the upper belly, not the lower belly. If the lower belly is what is coming out, you're dealing with pelvic dysfunction, pelvic floor dysfunction, most likely.

So I've run into a number of yogis who've practiced for years and taught that whole belly thing. And literally, you know, and they're quite, they have quite dysfunctional breathing patterns because they can't breathe into the rib cage. They're actually just breathing down, not expanding the cage, right? Yeah.

We want expansion horizontal. And then that's where the vertical occurs, right? So it horizontally initiates. And if I just put...

If I just sit up with on my sit bones vertically in a chair with my back, my back's not on, I put my hands around my lower ribs. I just want to organize down a little bit. And then I, and I feel those ribs move immediately out and into my back. And then my belly ends up filling.

Right. That's the, the, the upper part of my belly. So that's, that's essentially where that happens. And then from there, then become shoulders, all that we're not, you don't need to really train the secondary muscles. Those are short term muscles that are very glycolytic in nature. So those are, those are for last resort type things. The most common tendency for people would be for the ribs to have a tendency to flare and kind of be stuck in like external rotation and to be able to come down and

down towards the pelvis and drop into internal rotation on the exhalation is going to be very healing for creating support, support and stability for that, uh,

respiratory diaphragm pelvic floor relationship slash the whole everything. Yeah. I mean that pelvic floor is so important and I think so many people miss that where it's like, you know, if you're, if you're really working on some breath control and core work, you should be pulling out. Like you should be, you should be like, it's like you're stopping yourself. You're like, you've got to go to the bathroom real bad and you're pulling up and trying to stop that. That should be engaged as you're breathing. Yeah.

especially on that exhale. Now, that shouldn't be something you're walking around all day thinking about, right? Because if you've done the work, those muscles naturally should remain engaged, right?

that when they should have like healthy, healthy tone, not be excessively flaccid or hyper toned either be like dynamic. It's interesting. The idea of, so the, the, you know, your whole body's a closed hydraulic system. And so if you think of the diaphragm descending to expand open, create a vacuum in the lungs to pull air in,

The pelvic floor needs to also be able to expand and relax. And so going through that, that relationship of as I inhale, there needs to be an opening through my abdomen and my lower back and my pelvic floor to be able to actually allow the space for my diaphragm to function.

Like there could be dysfunction because of inhibition or rigidity within my pelvis, which is interesting, I think. Correct. To start to bring, it's like, oh, I need to breathe into my cock. Yeah. Cool. I didn't think about that. Yeah. Yeah. Most people aren't engaged down there. Yeah.

It just is what it is. But I mean, so mechanically speaking, you know, you kind of want to dial that in a little bit every day or, you know, whenever you go train, like that's just kind of like starting, you know, with some stuff, like do a few exercises that revolve around that. Once you get it dialed, that stuff can get a little bit more extreme. Like I do, I'll do some hard, some hard, more hardcore, like kind of neck training stuff that involves the whole core

but like I've got a resistance breathing device in and I'm going end to end with that for a couple of sets to get that strengthened, but also to get it activated so that when like I go squat or deadlift, I'm not doing that shit. I'm just squatting and deadlifting because it's now integrated and it's a part of the process. What resistance breathing devices would you recommend for someone? Is a straw enough? I mean, I can, I,

here I can tell you and it's actually really cheap very cheap I mean I send this to everybody where I was like snorkel things with a little little tourney doodad valve on it the correct yeah I have one of those two I like it yeah it gets all slobbery though that's the only thing I don't like about it like it's yours man you deal with it wash it out where every times portable respiratory muscle trainer

on amazon yeah that's the same thing 7.98 yeah it's like 13 bucks or something like that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so 20 of them at a time and then i just give them to clients as they come in and stuff yeah those tools are great because it creates feedback and resistance to be able to actually have to really actively engage those muscles

and you're like dude no no no so i have a question for you with that with with using the respiratory respiratory tool like that would it be is it okay that you are now practicing mouth breathing for one thing uh and is it more uh efficacious or does it matter to emphasize the exhalation or the inhalation if you're using resistance for your breath so

In it with respects to this is causing more resistance than what the nose does. So that's why I'm actually using it. It's strength training. So I'm actually doing some strength training. I'm looking at it like lifting weights for the primary breathing muscles and getting the core integrated into that.

Um, that is all we're doing with that. I will sometimes include it into cardio warmups where we go resistance breathing device. You go into end one, one to three breaths at the top of every minute. And then you go right back to nose breathing and the nose breathing feels like mouth breathe. So it's a very easy process.

well orchestrated path to kind of not only getting warmed up and getting the pulmonary system integrated with everything, but I'm getting my breathing really ready to go for whatever sort of intense work I might be doing, which is something most people are never thinking about or doing. And something probably for people to think about if they are using a resistance tool like that, or just using the natural resistance of just, you know, breathing in general, uh,

would be paying attention to the alignment of your ribs and your pelvis and all of that, because it's kind of like if you're doing, you know, Kegel exercises, but you're practicing clenching your your your kegels from a quote unquote like dysfunctional position, you're just like downloading or pressing save on a dysfunctional file.

And so if you're doing these resistance exercises, it would probably also be wise to be paying attention to orientation of the ribs and all the other different parts. Is there any specific cues you would provide for a client or yourself as far as rib orientation or body orientation when they're going through a resistance breathing exercise? They have, they, they will typically, because my clients are typically all over the world, like they're all over the place. So they'll get videos of how to do a specific exercise and

Then they're actually given, Hey, I want you to go end to end three breaths with this device in that position. And they supply me with the feedback on that type of stuff. So, Hey, was that how hard, you know, what was going on? Um, you know, uh, if somebody comes to see me and I work with them, I'm actually, my hands are on them and I'm showing them exactly what's going on. Um, you know, but

I try to keep it as dumbed down, basic as possible. Meaning I don't try and talk over their head about mechanics. I try and just go, no, let's see this position. Now show me your breathing. And they like fill up.

And they're like, holy crap. You know, and it's like, yeah, you couldn't fill up. I like, I like the, the, I don't know if this is Belisa Vrenich's language or not, but I got it from her of like the horizontal versus vertical breathing. Yes, that is. Yeah. Yeah. That is Belisa's. And so something like really simple would just be like, allow your ribs to kind of descend a little bit, like relax, like relaxing yourself and then bring your hands on the sides of the ribs and feel that breath starting to move horizontally. And then you could also put your hands on your lower back, which I don't know if Belisa recommends this as well, but I do.

Um, and feel that breath going into your back and that's going to naturally place the ribs into a more natural, healthy kind of like cylindrical orientation to be able to create better pressure and then maybe stack the breathing on top of that. I think would be maybe a potential, you know, horizontal breathing with that. Yeah. And then with, with, and then with, um, something that's very common with people is nasal restrictions.

Do you have any recommendation for that? So we got resistance. We're starting to turn on the respiratory muscles. We're starting to align and organize the diaphragm and all that stuff. But we still are bunched up and we actually can't get breath through the nose. Yeah, I go spend one month focused on not going outside of a gear one.

which is, you know, an equal in and out nose only breathing where it's, you know, greater than four seconds in length. So like a two in, two out, two seconds out, two, two seconds in, two seconds out. So your breath rate, your respiration rate is below 20 breaths per minute, right? Go only do that for a month, no matter what. So toggle down the intensity of whatever you're doing. If it pushes you beyond that, right? Mm-hmm.

Do that for a month. Now, if your nose still an issue, go see an ENT and get that thing cleaned up. Why a month? What happens during that time frame? Would you recommend mouth taping during that time frame for any activities? I don't like mouth taping because it kind of changes the level of commitment.

It's like, oh, I'm just going to put this tape on so I don't open my mouth. No, you really should be learning to kind of wire that up, mind and body a bit. The big thing is adaptation. What sort of, like, if you look at my nose. Oh, you got a little lopsided there, bro. Yeah, I'm very lopsided. I think mine's lopsided, too.

We're not too bad. I can operate in a gear one up to about 140 heart rate, which is just touching zone four for if we're talking about cardiovascular, right? Like, so like that,

And beyond that, I then switch into a gear four, which is easy mouth breathe, because that's where that should happen. Because now we have a whole community of people who bought into this nose breathing thing and thinking it's the be all end all. It is not. It's not. I've tested it.

A lot of people, they retard things in the opposite direction because now you're not getting enough oxygen when you go above moderate efforts of exercise. So now you're not actually onboarding enough oxygen for use.

So ventilation goes up, right? So depth and rate change for very good reason. But easy mouth breathing gear four is just, and because you've been rewiring things for a month, when you do switch out, when you do go up to that, you now are primed and designed to really be using those primary breathing muscles.

You don't need to bring on where most people who have not done any sort of training with their breathing muscles tend to have – I mean, the amount of runners I watch and see that are just like breathing here, stiff upper – their neck is stiff, all of it. They only have access to the upper chest.

for breathing. They're missing huge, huge opportunity. And the huge opportunity from what I've been seeing with testing, I mean, I see between 20 and 60% changes in VO2 maps with most of the people that come to me.

And I have seen some elite athletes. Could you outline the gear system of breathing quickly? Because I think it's a great model for people to have. Yeah. Gear one is easy nasal breathing, but it's also, you know, it's controlled. It's greater than four seconds in length, right? So it's two, like, just think of it as two in, two out. Gear two is power nose breathing.

Gear two is very limited because we will skip gear three, which is transitional. That's usually transitional down, but I'll sometimes use that to train people just for some, just training purposes. However, it's a gear, it's a transitional gear for gearing down. So, so don't think of gear three right now. We go gear two, gear four, which is into, uh,

into gear five. So anything above roughly a 30 respiration rate with mouth breathing is gear five. Gear four is between 20 and 30 breaths a minute. Gear three comes in when I go from working hard into now shut it off. And now I'm nose in, mouth out. And you will see recovery happen pretty quickly by doing that.

And you could also reverse that. But then you you move that air with that transitional gear. And as soon as you feel a change, then you drop into a gear one. And how does that work that when you are in, say, gear five, because you are in higher respiratory demand, being in that gear too much or just breathing that way in general or mouth breathing?

You're off gassing more CO2 and a la more effect. You're increasing alkalinity, decreasing acidity, and you are causing your hemoglobin to become change shape and become more stinted with the release of oxygen. While simultaneously you need more oxygen in that moment. You can, you can over breathe.

at moderate to lower high intensity efforts. Meaning like heart rate zone four and below, you can over breathe that. Like heart rate zone, you're 90% and above, you really can't over breathe. Although there are compensations that I've seen and picked up on where people are breathing at like a 60 respiration rate, but they're at like 70% tidal volume. So you're in an obvious compensation.

at that point where you can't hit title volume, you know, because you're so stressed. Can you define title volume? Yeah. The depth at which, so how much air you can actually, how much air you can fill your lungs with. You'll still, you'll, you'll, you will see people hit some title volume in like a gear two gear one. So they'll hit in range, but they're not needing to move that very fast. Right? Well, if I'm moving up into a gear five and I can't go, uh,

All the way in. So that just means I'm going short and short change breathing. I'm just going versus right. You don't need to necessarily hit end, you know, bottom end, but if you can't hit that top end, there's a problem.

Your alveolar sacs are most sensitive at end ranges. So you're getting best diffusion off of CO2 and O2 at those end ranges. There is a genetic reason for that. If I'm in fight or flight and I'm hauling ass and I'm moving, I got to be able to move air and get real good air. How interesting. Your alveolar sacs are more sensitive during end ranges. So full exhalation, full inhalation, you're going to have more...

sensitivity within is that because is that kind of like the like the physiological side kind of thing where it kind of like lifts them off of themselves and collapse yeah yeah and yet none of that is necessary if i'm calm

- Yeah. - So I can just be, but you can't see that I'm breathing. That's, you know, when you get back to normal breathing, normal breathing should be, I can't tell that fool's breathing. - Yeah, yeah, like samurai breath or whatever people call it. I was doing the, I know you have a relationship with Laird Hamilton, I was doing the pool training stuff out at his place, maybe, I don't know, whatever, last summer. And one of the things that stood out to me

as we were dunking up and down, uh, that he said that has continued to stand out and been something that I've like, I've, I've continued to perpetuate to myself is that it's not about the inhale. It's about the exhale, right?

And that was like a download that he got from, I don't know who, somebody else. And that was one of the things like when we come up out of the pool, it was like getting a full evacuation to get all of that air out to be able to get replenished with a, like a, you know, a, a more robust inhalation or a richer inhalation. Yeah.

Do you think that there's something to that? What are your thoughts of the value of exhalation? In certain instances, yes. Right? In certain instances, yes. I don't think you need to dump all your air all the time. Yeah. In fact, I mean, I'm on a bike or I'm on a, yeah, I'm running and I'm literally researching, I'm studying the stuff I'm doing. I'm paying attention to,

Where is the change happening? I've got like a metabolic card on right and I've got I'm watching tissue saturation I'm watching this stuff as it's occurring and dumping the air while Exercising all the time is not necessarily the bet like trying to get rid of that. That's just wasted time You're going to actually move your moving air fast air doesn't just sit while I'm moving air like this, right and

But in instances like with Laird in the pool or Laird in big surf, yeah, you want to be getting rid of your air before you go to take a full inhale because you're going to need all the fresh air you can get in order to be down for two or three minutes while you're getting rolled. Right? Like, so in Laird's training, to be clear, is, is, is genius in that,

This maniac discovered, figured out how to kind of push those limits of CO2 and pressure and force control of breathing through.

in a pool environment. So, I mean, it's, he's, he's a genius like that. I mean, he's an innovator. The guy is an innovator. That's what he does. Wrapping things up. Are, is there anything that you see standing out in the, in the breathing world that you feel is maligned or off that you would like to see rectified or shifted? I stay away from the breathing world. Okay.

Most of it's hogwash. So what would you say is hogwash in the breathing education space? I would say most people are getting lost and stuck to a methodology versus understanding respiratory physiology and physiology in general, you know, and even mechanics. You know, you went into a deep dive with mechanics here. Most of these methodologies and things don't even touch that.

Right. Because they don't want to, because they've got this cool little toy that can change somebody's state. And that's really all anybody's interested in. They'll just keep breathing people and doing this with people without actually, you know, going, well,

you're still doing the same shit. Like, Hey, for me, what I do with clients is I'm looking to kind of help these people who, I mean, I'm dealing with professional athletes and like executives working at very, very high levels. So managing multiple companies, things like that, where I do a full,

rundown of like how they manage stress, how they respond to, you know, an exhale assessment, CO2, and then how they respond to a metabolic assessment. I'm looking at tissue saturation, oxygen to the brain, et cetera. I'm looking at all this stuff so that I can go, Hey,

What you're doing throughout the day, we need to figure out some off points because you're not managing stress here very well. Like I run people through an assessment that is very boring to start. They're doing low, low effort work on a metabolic heart that just goes up.

a smidge every five minutes and they're like bored out of their mind. And it's everything I need to see because the thing, one of the thing that changes that, that really is that stress thing. And we started kind of with this is CO2 is CO2 changes that respiratory drive and it changes how things are going on in the body. And if I've got somebody, we'll just use this as one case because we've talked about it. If I've got somebody who over breathes a little bit,

I see that in the tissue. I see that even though the metabolic card is saying, oh, he's aerobic right now or he's utilizing fat, but yet his tissue and his brain are not getting oxygen very effectively.

What would be the metabolic test that you would suggest someone goes through, say from home? Are they going to need fancy gadgets and devices or such? Or what would be your suggestion? So there is actually, it's gotten better and I'm supposed to get my third version of this one. But I got a buddy of mine at Duke who's really like, I swear this version of it is badass. It's called Caliber. It's spelled C-A-L-I-B-R-E. So it's English Caliber.

Caliber biometrics. They've got a $400 metabolic cart. It's pretty badass. It's pretty easy to use with their app, but it'll give you some pretty good numbers. If

If you really want the whole shebang, you're going to want either a Moxie or a train red near infrared. But, you know, it takes time to kind of understand what you're doing. I've kind of pioneered a way to look at this and look at clientele with this stuff that come to me because I mean, I can get some of the highest level players in the world in a sport and I can see a limiter that

somebody else wasn't picking up because they just did a traditional VO2 max test, which is just like you start at nothing and you go to everything within like eight minutes. And I'm taking like 30 minutes to get to that, to a point where I might have them work really hard for three minutes, right? Needless to say, my point here is that most of what I'm seeing, if people go and address how they're looking at how they manage their daily life, like the stress of their life,

And then they start to implement tools around that in order to bring themselves into reality. Breathing has a very potent energy in that, especially when we apply it to exercise and you decide to stop being a reactive, you know, SOB to everything or victimizing yourself to everything. That is where breathing has a very, very potent deal. And I've had...

I've had an entire C-suite at one point thank me as a client walked out of the room who was, you know, the owner of the company. And they literally were like, thank you for what you're doing. Like over the last three years, this dude has changed so much. Like he's come down in a level to where he's not as reactive and not this tire print, right? He's regulated. Yeah. So I appreciate that.

You saying the thing that you'd want to change is the lack of emphasis on mechanics and the lack of emphasis on principles around respiratory physiology and understanding like how to, how to kind of drive the boat as opposed to just having some specific exercises. Cause I created a program that's not out yet, but it's all founded on first mechanics and then the principles of,

of down regulation and up regulation. And then a section on anatomy and physiology of just like what you ought to know to have visualization what's happening. So I'll include that for people listening in the outro, the link for that for like, we'll have like a free trial and all that stuff. And so I'm very glad that that's the exact thing. Cause I'm like, I agree. I made something.

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.

I look forward to seeing you guys over there. - I'm like, yeah, I'm in my own world doing my own thing. I'm like, I'm good, man. I don't wanna, like the whole breath space, it got, I was just like, nope, I'm out. Everybody's into their own little methodology of some-- - Yeah, I'm not into methodologies.

Principles learn principles. What do you need to know as far as from a principle based understanding? And then from there you can apply the principles on whatever methodology, but I'd actually understand the intrinsics of the methodology as opposed to being lost in the methodology.

Thanks so much, man. I really appreciate these conversations where if people want to, I know that you do various different things. You actually actually work with, with coaching clients. We have a membership website. People can jump on. We're not, we're not exactly very active with that. I have some coaches that help run that with for me, but yeah,

What I do is very personalized. It requires high, high commitment level.

meaning life and financially for people to invest in. It's not a short order process, but if people really are interested and think that they want to test that, more than welcome to jump in. They can go to shiftadapt.com and just go through the website. They'll find it.

everything there amazing cool um thank you so much i appreciate you uh you're easy uh i i love you dude you are i love you man i really appreciate it all right that's it that's all thank you i'll see you next week

Enjoy that conversation. If you would like to go deeper into understanding your own breath, I recommend checking out the Align Breathing Archetype Quiz. You can find that at alignpodcast.com/quiz. You are asked a few subjective questions about your state, your mood, the way you handle stressors, and then you take a couple quick breathing tests. It will only take you a few minutes in total. It will tell you a lot about yourself.

And it's pretty fun. And it also gives you a benchmark to be able to come back to if you do pursue the practice of regulating your breath.

So that's over at alignedpodcast.com/quiz. And if you just wanna start the free week trial of the Aligned Breathing Program, you can go to alignedpodcast.com/breathe. I am absolutely confident that the Aligned Breathing Program is the most comprehensive breathing program on the internet. Reason being, most breathing programs that I have seen do not go into the mechanics and provide you specific exercises on how to rewire the mechanics of your breathing.

That's what this does. It also teaches you about downregulation, upregulation, and a brief overview on anatomy and physiology. Relevant for you to understand your breath, not just for yourself, but also to be able to convey it to other people. That's it. That's all. I hope you guys enjoy. The quiz is alignpodcast.com slash quiz, and you can start the trial at alignpodcast.com slash breathe.