One of the easiest and most impacting things to work on is how you breathe.

One of the easiest and most impacting things to work on is how you breathe. You may not even be aware of it but it can make a huge difference to your overall well being and your body’s ability to respond to the training you’re doing.

Breathing

If you ask correctly your body will tell you the physical substance you need more than anything else is air. You can only go a few minutes without it then you will cease to live. It is for this reason correcting your breathing pattern is so important to your health. If you’re breathing incorrectly your body will not be fully exercise responsive, and your ability to lose fat or gain muscle will be hindered.

Each breath brings oxygen into your lungs which goes to your heart, your heart then transports freshly oxygenated blood to different parts of your body. The Oxygen molecules act as a positive charge and water molecules [60-95% of your body] act as a negative charge. Because there’s positive and a negative charge in the same area and that creates potential energy [for those of you who remember year 8 science]. What science calls potential energy the eastern cultures call Chi or Prana or put simply your life force.

While you may not be consciously aware of your breathing pattern, it does effect how much oxygen you get into your body, which in turn affect the efficiency of your autonomic nervous system [ANS]. The ANS is what controls the bodily functions that you don’t consciously think about i.e. Hear rate, metabolism, detoxification system, immune system, cell regrowth (how quickly you re-grow muscle) etc. An inverted respitory pattern [bad breathing] can half the amount of oxygen you get in each breath. That’s like only half filling your car with petrol every time you go to the service station and still asking it to drive the same distance.

If you observe a baby breathe while asleep, you will see what a natural breathing pattern looks like. This is how it was for us too before we learn of mental and emotional stress, and before we are hunched a desk for 8 hours a day. When you copy this breathing pattern it will not only get more oxygen into your system, you will also bring you back to the stress free feeling of being a child. This is why focusing on your breathing is commonly associated with meditation

Recommendations

5 minutes a day of controlled deep diaphragmatic breathing
Simply lie down on your back and place one hand on your belly button and one hand over your heart. As you inhale make sure the hand on your belly button rises before the hand on your heart, this will ensure your lungs fill up from the bottom getting more oxygen in with every breath. Exhale and repeat for 5 minutes

Walking Meditative Breathing

This can be done any time you are walking, inhale for 4 steps, hold for 1 step, then exhale for 4 steps. As this becomes easier build up the amount of steps to 10 for both inhalation and exhalation. Try to make sure the breath goes firstly into the bottom of your lungs pushing your stomach out then fills up into the top of your lungs and expands your chest in the last part of the breath