Breathwork in Your Everyday Life
Episode #9 of the course Breathwork: Science and practice by David Urbansky
Welcome back! You have learned a lot of science, theory, and practical skills. Today, I want to focus on what a healthy lifestyle incorporating your new breathing skills could look like. First, we will look at what you can do to keep your lungs healthy. Then, I’ll give you some tips and one useful tool to get you started on making breathwork a healthy habit in your life!
Tips for Keeping Your Lungs Healthy
As you have learned, your lungs do most of the work during breathing. Prevention is better than curing, so follow these tips to keep (or get) healthy and efficient lungs:
Do not smoke! This should be self-explanatory, but just in case you needed to hear it. Dump those cigarettes and stay away from people who smoke as secondhand smoke is damaging to your health as well [6].
Go outside! Indoor air contains 2-5 times more pollutants than the air outside. Obviously, this depends on where exactly you live, but if you don’t live next to a coal plant the chances are good that this statistic applies to your situation too [1].
Exercise! Just a few minutes a day can be enough to get the heart pumping and air flowing, which improves your cardiovascular health.
Get vaccinated! Getting the flu puts unnecessary stress on your lungs, so again, prevention is better than repair!
Eat healthy! Obviously eating healthy has many benefits in general, but it also affects your cardiovascular health. What is eating healthy? It is really not such a big mystery like many people make it out to be. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables and minimize processed foods and sugar.
Avoid pollutants! Pollutants are allergens (pollen, dust, and pet dander), microorganisms (mold, bacteria, dust mites), and airborne gases (paints, cleaning products, adhesives, nail polish). Simply increase ventilation by airing out your rooms, clean regularly, and consider using air filters. One study found that about 16% of Americans are allergic to dust mites [2], so you could invest in dust mite-proof covers for your bed [3].
Laugh! Laughing is not only fun, it also stretches your diaphragm and lungs and relieves tension in your solar plexus [4].
How to Incorporate Breathwork into Your Life
To get the benefits of breathwork you should incorporate it into your daily routine. You don’t have to do much, it can start with as little as one single conscious breath! Here are my suggestions, evaluate whether they fit into your lifestyle, and feel free to pick and choose:
• Set yourself an alarm on your phone for some time during your workday. Once the timer goes off, interrupt what you’re doing and take one nice deep conscious breath. If you do this often enough it’ll become a healthy habit that you can do without an alarm. This single breath will center and relax you.
• Do 5 minutes of heart coherence breathing after brushing your teeth before going to bed at night. This will stop the chatter in your brain, calm you down, and prepare you for a more restful night.
• If you’re more the athletic type, perform 10-20 minutes of fast breathing (bhastrika or kapalabhati) in the morning for a month and track the impact it has on your athletic performance. Can you run faster or longer? Do your muscles get less sore?
I promised you a little reward for getting so far in this course, so here it is! I have created a simple breathwork app that you can use on your computer or phone to perform the exercises you learned throughout the course. Check it out: Easy Breathwork [5].
Did you set a breathing timer? Did you try out the breathwork app? Great, then tomorrow we’ll summarize what you’ve learned!
Recommended book
Breathing: The Master Key to Self Healing by Andrew Weil
References
[1] Why Indoor Air Quality is Important to Schools (EPA)
[2] Results of a home-based environmental intervention among urban children with asthma
[4] Breatheology: The Art of Conscious Breathing
[5] Easy Breath
[6] Health Effects of Secondhand Smoke (CDC)
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