The Science of Breathing | James Nestor
This episode features science journalist James Nestor, author of "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art," who argues that many people breathe incorrectly. He explains how fixing dysfunctional breathing can alleviate physical and psychological ailments, covering the importance of posture, nasal breathing, and various techniques.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Introduction to James Nestor and Breathing Dysfunctions
Breathing as a Missing Pillar of Health
Why Humans Are the Worst Breathers in the Animal Kingdom
Impact of Posture on Breathing Efficiency
The Deleterious Effects of Mouth Breathing
Modern Environment Pollutants and CO2 Levels
The Surprising Power and Function of the Nose
Why Our Mouths Have Shrunk and the Importance of Chewing
Introducing Pulmonauts: Experts in Breathing
The Art of Exhalation and Diaphragmatic Breathing
Coherent Breathing for Normalizing Respiration
Breathing Plus: Advanced Techniques for Human Potential
Breathing Techniques for Anxiety and Mental Well-being
Integrating Breathing Practices with Meditation and Exercise
The Link Between Breathing and Sleep Quality
Sudarshan Kriya and Transcendent Breathing Experiences
Scientific Validation of Breathing's Profound Effects
7 Key Concepts
Breathing as a Pillar of Health
Breathing is presented as a fundamental, often overlooked, pillar of health alongside exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Dysfunctional breathing can undermine overall well-being, regardless of other healthy habits, and is a root cause of many chronic health issues.
Oral Posture
Oral posture refers to the proper positioning of the mouth, specifically keeping the jaw closed and the tongue in the correct place. Poor oral posture, often due to mouth breathing, can obstruct airways, lead to chronic nasal congestion, and increase stress on the body during respiration.
Pulmonauts
Pulmonauts is a term coined to describe individuals with a deep interest in breathing, including researchers, academics, and those who have personally overcome chronic respiratory issues through breathing practices. They are dedicated to understanding and improving breathing for themselves and others.
Art of Exhalation
This concept emphasizes that effective inhalation depends on a complete and proper exhalation. It highlights the role of the diaphragm, a large muscle beneath the lungs, in fully expelling air and massaging internal organs, which is crucial for lymphatic drainage and overall organ function.
Coherent Breathing
Coherent breathing is a simple technique involving inhaling and exhaling to the same slow count, such as five or six seconds each. Practicing this rhythm helps the diaphragm fully engage, allows for fewer, deeper breaths, and can gradually acclimate the body to a more natural, efficient breathing pattern.
Breathing Plus
Breathing Plus is an umbrella term for advanced, more strenuous breathing modalities like Pranayama, Wim Hof Method, or holotropic breathwork. These techniques, often requiring more effort and time, aim to unlock greater human potential, address chronic conditions, and produce more pronounced benefits beyond basic functional breathing.
Over-breathers
Many modern humans are unconscious over-breathers, taking too many breaths with too much volume, often through the mouth. This dysfunctional pattern sends constant stress signals to the body, elevating blood sugar and cortisol, and eventually leading to various health problems.
8 Questions Answered
Humans are unique among mammals for having widespread respiratory issues like asthma, snoring, and sleep apnea. This is attributed to industrialized living, poor posture, environmental pollutants, and changes in facial structure over the last 300 years, which have created barriers to proper breathing.
Slouching or hunching over, common in modern life, restricts the ability of the lungs to fully inflate and the diaphragm to descend properly. Maintaining an upright posture with a straight spine allows for more efficient, deep breathing.
Common signs include a constantly dry mouth. To check at night, you can try placing a small piece of surgical tape over your lips; if it's uncomfortable or comes off, you're likely mouth breathing during sleep.
Anthropological studies show that around 300-400 years ago, as cultures shifted from chewy, hard, whole foods to industrialized, processed diets, facial structures changed. Less chewing stress led to smaller, caved-in upper palates, resulting in crooked teeth and obstructed nasal airways.
The nose acts as the body's primary defense, heating, humidifying, and filtering air before it reaches the lungs, removing particulates, and fighting off viruses and bacteria. Breathing through the nose also helps regulate airflow, making it more fluid and rhythmic.
Yes, many psychologists and psychiatrists use breathing exercises as a first step for patients with anxiety, depression, and panic. Dysfunctional breathing, such as over-breathing or breath-holding, can exacerbate these conditions, and fixing it can bring balance back to a stressed body and brain.
Even without diagnosed sleep apnea, dysfunctional breathing during sleep, such as snoring, prevents the body from fully resetting and restoring itself. Addressing sleep-disordered breathing is a primary step to improving overall sleep quality and combating insomnia.
While some people jump directly into intensive techniques, many researchers and breathwork teachers recommend first establishing healthy, consistent nasal breathing and slower rhythms. This foundational change can make advanced techniques more effective and beneficial for overall health.
36 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Nasal Breathing
Consciously train yourself to breathe primarily through your nose during the day and exclusively through your nose at night, as this habit can make a tremendous difference to your health and is about 70% of the way to healthy breathing.
2. Master Normal Breathing First
Before attempting intensive ‘breathing plus’ techniques, ensure you have established normal, functional breathing by consistently breathing through your nose and more slowly, not through your mouth.
3. Practice Coherent Breathing
Begin practicing ‘coherent breathing’ by inhaling to a count of about five or six and exhaling to the same count, performing these slow, lower breaths periodically to acclimate your body to natural breathing.
4. Integrate Coherent Breathing
Incorporate coherent breathing into various daily activities, such as answering emails, doing dishes, or driving, to gradually make it an unconscious, natural habit that you don’t have to think about.
5. Use Lip Tape for Night Breathing
To ensure nasal breathing during sleep, use a small piece of light adhesive surgical tape on your lips at night, a technique that can make a tremendous difference to your health by preventing mouth breathing.
6. Use Lip Tape for Nasal Breathing
To train for obligate nasal breathing during the day, apply a small piece of light adhesive surgical tape to your lips for increasing durations (starting at 10 minutes) to unconsciously train you to keep your mouth closed.
7. Improve Oral Posture
Pay attention to ‘oral posture’ by keeping your mouth closed and tongue in the proper position, as mouth breathing can obstruct airways, lead to chronic nasal congestion, and cause stress to the body.
8. Straighten Spine for Breathing
Maintain an upright posture with a straight spine and shoulders back, as this position is the most efficient way for us to breathe by allowing the lungs to easily inflate and the diaphragm to sink down lower.
9. Conscious Good Sitting Posture
Make a habit of sitting with your shoulders back and spine straight, as improved posture directly leads to improved breathing and allows your body to operate at a more efficient state.
10. Address Sleep-Disordered Breathing
Prioritize addressing sleep-disordered breathing, such as snoring or sleep apnea, as it prevents your body from restoring itself during sleep and is a significant obstacle to overall health and resolving insomnia.
11. Fix Breathing for Mental Health
Address dysfunctional breathing as a primary intervention for anxiety, depression, and panic, as psychologists and psychiatrists have found it to be the most powerful thing for healing these conditions.
12. Master Exhalation First
Prioritize a complete exhalation before inhaling, as you can’t get an enriching inhale unless you first really get a proper exhale, which allows your diaphragm to descend more and rise up more.
13. Engage Diaphragm Fully
Practice breathing in a way that allows your diaphragm to fully descend and rise, as this massages internal organs like the kidney, stomach, and intestines, helping them purge lymph fluid and function properly.
14. Eat Chewy Whole Foods
Replace soft, processed industrial foods with harder, whole foods that require more chewing, like starchy roots, meat, and raw vegetables, to promote proper facial and airway development.
15. Chew More for Facial Health
Increase chewing activity, aiming for about half an hour a day, to create more muscle and skeletal structure in your face, which is vitally important for forming a larger mouth and airway, especially when younger.
16. Don’t Over-Trim Nose Hair
Avoid trimming all nasal hairs, as they are there to catch particulates, slow down the air you’re taking into your lungs, and capture moisture, all of which are important for fluid, rhythmic breathing and lung protection.
17. Avoid Unconscious Over-Breathing
Be mindful of and avoid unconscious over-breathing, especially when at a desk, as it sends constant stress signals to your body, raising blood sugar and cortisol levels, which can eventually wreck your health.
18. Nasal Breathe During Exercise
During exercise, consciously shift from mouth breathing to nasal breathing, taking longer, more fluid breaths, as this allows you to stay in the aerobic zone longer and operate more efficiently.
19. Increase Fresh Air Exposure
Combat indoor pollutants like high CO2 levels by opening doors when sleeping or cracking windows in living spaces, as getting fresh air is beneficial for reducing chronic inflammation.
20. Alternate Sitting and Standing
Avoid remaining in a single position for extended periods; instead, shift between sitting and standing every hour, as this movement is what our bodies are designed to do and where we are healthiest.
21. Take Short Walking Breaks
Walk around for at least five minutes every couple of hours, as this simple movement can have a huge and significant impact on blood sugar, diabetes regulation, and blood pressure.
22. Micro-Movements While Standing
When using a standing desk, it’s helpful to put a small ball under your feet to encourage subtle micro-movements, preventing static standing and promoting better body function.
23. Practice Yoga for Breathing
Engage in yoga to make your rib cage and intercostals flexible, learn to take big, enriching breaths, and softly massage your organs, as 90% of yoga’s benefits come from deep breathing and organ massage.
24. Recognize Meditation as Breathwork
Understand that meditation inherently involves beneficial breathwork, as calming the mind and focusing on the breath naturally leads to coherent, rich, and beneficial breathing patterns.
25. Complement Meditation with Breathwork
Explore additional breathwork techniques to complement an existing meditation practice, as breathing is only going to contribute to balance and overall health, offering a net gain without detracting from meditation.
26. Explore Intensive Breathwork
After mastering normal breathing, explore intensive breathwork techniques like Kundalini or Wim Hof method, which involve vigorous, rhythmic breathing patterns, to gain more pronounced benefits for chronic conditions or stress.
27. Conscious Over-Breathing for Stress
Engage in conscious, vigorous breathing patterns for short periods (e.g., 20 minutes), as this acts like a ‘pressure release valve’ for your body and brain, allowing you to focus and then expel accumulated daily stress.
28. Explore Sudarshan Kriya
Consider exploring techniques like Sudarshan Kriya, which involves rhythmic breathing patterns, as it has been shown to be very effective for asthma, anxiety, and depression, but should be done under careful supervision due to its intensity.
29. Use Breathing for Physical Ailments
Recognize that specific breathing techniques can significantly improve conditions like emphysema more than any other therapy, and even help straighten a scoliotic spine through practices like orthopedic breathing.
30. Stop Breathwork If Uncomfortable
If engaging in intense breathwork and you feel uncomfortable or dislike the experience, remember you can always stop the practice and return to normal breathing at any time, as it’s completely natural.
31. Build Habits Through Awareness
To change breathing or posture habits, the very first thing you do is become aware of the current dysfunctional pattern, then consciously work to create new, better habits over time.
32. Set Reminders for Habits
Utilize tools like alarms, hourly self-check-ins (‘How am I sitting? How am I breathing?’), apps, or wearables to consistently remind yourself to improve posture and breathing, thereby reinforcing new habits.
33. Monitor Breathing Benefits
Objectively assess the benefits of slow, rhythmic breathing by measuring your blood pressure, blood glucose, or heart rate variability before and after a few minutes of practice to observe its profound effects.
34. Chew Hard, Sugar-Free Gum
If you do not have temporomandibular joint (TMJ) issues, chew hard, sugar-free gum for about half an hour a day to gain benefits for facial muscle and skeletal development.
35. Chew Raw Carrots
Use raw carrots as a natural and effective way to increase chewing stress, similar to hard gum, to strengthen facial muscles and support proper facial development.
36. Approach Challenges as Opportunities
When faced with news or challenges, view them as opportunities for improvement rather than sources of resistance, as this mindset can help address various ailments.
5 Key Quotes
No matter what you eat or how much you exercise or how much you sleep or whatever, you can never, ever really be healthy if you have dysfunctional breathing.
James Nestor
Your breath dictates your form. Your form dictates your breath.
James Nestor
You can never, ever heal anxiety ever without first fixing breathing.
James Nestor
The benefits that people get from meditation at the beginning for the first six months or first year, 95% of those are tied to the way in which you're breathing while you're sitting there focusing.
James Nestor
Snoring is someone who's struggling to breathe when they're supposed to be restoring their body. There's nothing cute about it. It is so damaging.
James Nestor
3 Protocols
Coherent Breathing
James Nestor- Inhale slowly to a count of about five or six.
- Exhale slowly to the same count of about five or six.
Nasal Breathing Habit Formation (Daytime)
James Nestor- Obtain surgical tape or micropore tape with a light adhesive.
- Remove some of the adhesive to ensure it's not too sticky.
- Place a small piece of tape on your lips while working or doing non-talking activities, starting with 10 minutes.
- Gradually increase the duration to half an hour, then an hour, as you become comfortable.
Nasal Breathing Habit Formation (Nighttime)
James Nestor- Use the same light-adhesive surgical tape as for daytime practice.
- Place a small piece of tape on your lips before going to sleep.
- This helps train your mouth to stay closed and encourages nasal breathing throughout the night.