6 Lessons from a Month of Better Breathing

Joe Kita, a respected health fitness author, wrapped up his month-long exploration of mindful breathing, and his verdict is in. Joe has been blogging his findings on his Core Performance One Small Change site using core info from our book, "Perfect Breathing."

We're happy to report that he found great benefit in breath awareness. Over the course of the month of July, he used mindful breathing techniques for Sleep, Game-Day, Pressure, Performance and Healing. Though his results ranged from spectacular to mixed (in other words, for him the jury's still out), he arrived at one thought that we felt was particularly salient:

"A yoga teacher once told me that control of the breath leads to control of the body," he wrote,
"which eventually leads to control of the mind. This experiment helped me understand more fully what she meant. When I was regulating my breath, I could feel my heart rate slow and muscle tension depart, which, in turn, helped me relax and focus."

For that alone, developing breath awareness and learning some simple mindful breathing techniques is worth the minimal effort it requires. And no gym membership, new sneakers or special diet is required!

We are thrilled and grateful for Joe's interest in our work. We hope you'll do your own 30-day breathing experiment. We think you'll find the results dramatic, and will give you a valuable tool you can use in everyday life -- even if you've never set foot in a yoga studio or studied meditation. Mindful breathing is for everybody.

Read Joe's full breathing series here. And don't forget to visit www.perfectbreath.com

health science

Breathe Yourself to Sleep

Fitness guru and Core Performance blogger Joe Kita continues his One Small Change series with some advice about how to use mindful breathing to help those who have trouble sleeping. He quotes us liberally and uses one of the exercises we outline in "Perfect Breathing."

“The breath is the common denominator in everything we do,” says Al Lee, co-author of Perfect Breathing, in Joe's post. “It touches every dimension of life. It directly and dramatically affects your health, your ability to heal, your emotions, your physical performance, your creativity, and it’s used by every spiritual tradition to help achieve deeper states of prayer, meditation and contemplation.”

Learn more at www.perfectbreath.com

health science

Losing Sleep? Just Breathe!

You can't throw a rock these days without hitting a news article or blog post about how much stress, anxiety, and sleeplessness is resulting from all of the changes that are crashing down on our lives resulting in more lost time from work, more visits to the doctor, etc, etc.

As we have mentioned many times in previous posts, one of the most powerful and effective stress remedies is your conscious intentional breath. In a nutshell, your breath counteracts nearly every negative effect that stress and anxiety have on your mind, body, and emotions.

One of the most effective exercises that we teach is called "The Healing Breath", and although we normally recommend it for those situations where you feel a cold or the flu coming on, it is a very powerful antidote to insomnia. Not only does it quiet your mind and body,but the breath-focus also takes your mind off all the pressing worries that are stressing you out and keeping you awake. We've found that often times you'll be back in slumberland before you can complete the exercise.

There are also several other great breath-based sleep remedies in a recent blog from Kate Dailey at Newsweek. She relays an interview with sleep expert Michael Krugman who has several excellent suggestions for getting the zzz's flowing again.

Sweet dreams!