Everything to know about breathwork & finding a technique for you

Published Nov 20, 2024, 10:21 PM

Meditation and breathwork expert Rich Muir discusses the physiological effects of different breathing techniques highlighting the importance of understanding individual breathing patterns and finding the right techniques for you. 

 

WANT MORE FROM RICH?

You can catch Rich’s classes at Eden Health Retreat - for more see @eden_health_retreat or here, or find him at The Meditation Spot here

 

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Hey there, Welcome to Extra Healthy Ish, the big sister podcast Too Healthy Ish from Body and Soul. I am your host, Felicity Harley. Now, if you are a regular listener of this podcast, you will know that I recently went to Eaeden Health Retreat in crumb And Valley in Queensland and it was amazing. Well, I sat through a breath work session with an amazing guy called Rich Mua. Eden calls him one of their joys, basically someone who is there for the guests throughout their entire stay. He is also, as I said, a meditation and breath work expert. His name is Rich Mua and after experiencing his wisdom, I knew I needed to get him on the podcast ear listeners so he could share his wisdom with you. Today, he joins us to discuss well the physiological effects of different breathing techniques, the importance of understanding which technique is right for you. Yes, we're all different, and he's going to help you work out well what might work, as well as giving us a few different sequences for some common everyday scenarios. Rich, nice to have you on Extra Healthy Thanks for joining us today. From well, should I say sunny Brisbane.

I'm in the beautiful crumbin valley, but it's not too sunny today. It's actually been overcast and slightly drizzly. I had a lot on about fifteen minutes ago, so I said, this is cold, especially Tommy, But thank you very much for having me.

Yeah, nice to have you. Now before we kick off and talk all things breath work? How do you stay extra healthy? Is in your life?

Look, I've made it a priority, and so I do things Like most mornings, I get up early, I meditate, I then jump in my sauna. I then jump in my ice bath, and then I go and sit in the sun and I do breathwork. That's kind of my foundational tools. And then obviously nutrition and body movement as well as very important. But those ones are my colds.

That's a pretty hefty morning routine. How talk us through it? How long does it last? What do you do? Do you do all of it? I mean you have kids as well? How do they all fit in around it?

Yeah? Unfortunately otivated my life. I've been doing this for nearly two decades now, not all that because I had times where I had multiple businesses, three young children and where's dad? Or his penny two hours out there by himself. My minimum twenty minutes meditation, which is really de exciting to know a system. I'll do twenty to twenty five minutes of my sauna, you know, anywhere from two to five minutes in the ice bar, and then ten to fifteen twenty mines depending on the day. But then breath work during the days at a staple continually. So that's something that's perpetually with me.

Yeah, that's an important point. We don't just stop at the morning routine. We carry it throughout the day. But talk to us about breath work. How did you get into it? And how did you end up at Eden? And and to teach breathing that I experienced.

Look, it's quite funny to sit here and go, yeah, I end up at Eden. It's like, oh my god, I felt like I was in purgatory for a long time. Sorry, in an element of dis ease in my nervous system for a long time. And we just paint the world. I think I grew up with the country tough dad, boys don't cry, tough and up there man, and happiness is success, all that sort of stuff, And I certainly venture pretty far down that path, and I was doing pretty well, and you know, I like, the house is looking really good, like the white picket fell, his wife to children, all that sort of stuff. But still there's these currents in my nervous system. Much we're just you know, and I'm really parent. There's a lot of kind of depression and chronic fatigue that I just kept playing forward and but at some point in my heart, my body, you keep going, you're missing the warning signs on the car here. And it went well, and that led me down the path of about eight and years to go down to explore meditation. And then I really was a bit of a game changer to me feeling honestly, I'm being quite stressed and erratic, and even the freeze response with that fatigue element to then just feeling this if calm inside remarkable. And then I went out and I continued to evolve with that, and then I found there's still some ingredients because if I only bin in my body a meditation, but then the ninety eight percent back to poor breathing, I'm really going back into stress patterns. So even though yes I'm getting calm, I'm still kind of putting the weeds back in. So for me it was like meditation leading the guard and where I was just feeling much calmer. But then I'm going out to the world putting the weeds back in, and that's where breath work came into my life and so richinally me was out of Eden. That's for out the last two years where I just started to introduce all these practices through I guess, well, I think a lot of my market and audience really resonate, so kind of try to dig this by a lot of the practice practices that how do we like it? How do we just enhance our nervous system, no different to fertilizing a plan to thrive at its highest expression, because I think a lot of us know I'm not lit up, I'm not feeling wonderful. I'm still going thro all emotions, and the outside of the house is yes, we're be good, but we've got either and these practices help as tune into that. And so then I went down a lot of the science operation to the point where I went to complete a psychololage with science degree just to sort of go, can I get a deeper understanding all this and make it even greater relevance to the people to strip it back from again a lot of the concepts around this stuff. That was a long answer, but it was from basically out of necessity. My nervous system has led me to it. And then thankfully I to listen to the warning size and yeah, funnily enough, from purgatory to sitting out here at even any day. I like that.

I mean, it's it's interesting, isn't it, Because the breath is You could argue it's well the most important thing when it comes to our health, but yet we've just perhaps overlooked it, undervalued it, and now suddenly everyone's talking about it.

Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it. And even when the remarkable thing that I think when we can contemplate when we look at the body, we can live without food for you know what, thirty forty days, water up to ten thereabouts. But breath. It's just like for most people, five minutes with our breath and we might not be coming back. And every Celtish neuron requires oxygen and for the conversion of energy well being, oxygen is just brutal and ingredient. But a lot of us, because it's autonomic, we think I had to breathe, but it's quite fascinating. Ninety percent of the population is breeding really inefficiently, twenty five percent to the point we're damaging our body. So thankfully now we're coming across, I think after I think the reason why I think it's come to the fruition recently is after the advent of the Western model of medicine, which is amazing, a lot of us are still feeling really bad, you know, and we're exercising, we're getting good nutrition, were doing all these things. But if we're breathing in a pattern which is still true in more of my sympathetic nervous and I'm still tri res responses unconsciously and getting more of that adrenaline cortisol reality, which makes us feel a little bit heightened and rough. But we've normalized. But now we can see through the breathing practices and sciences this becaus escalates that in minutes. I think that's really added to about the forefront, and that timing is just right for these practices. We're still wanting more and now we can see, ah, so important and so easy to do.

So we talk us through from a physiological kind of standpoint, what is happening in our body when we do bring our focus to our breath, if we are caught up in as you say, I think we're just all at this kind of this. Well, we're always kind of switched on, aren't we most the time? So what goes on in our body when we go okay, I'm going to bring my attention to my breath.

Yeah. Well, the remarkable thing is, and as you said, we're kind of constantly in this this heightened state and with all the work commands, life commands, so our breath pattern is going to be a bit more simulated, like maybe a bit faster and a lot of us rider the breathing essentially hyperventilating and which is really triggering our heart rate to go up, you, blood pressure and all these sort of physiological elements. With the visit clarity of thinking, you know, we get a little bit more incoherence between the heart and the brain because essentially our body thinks there is a line running at us. And that's what that stress response is timely for, is that rapid mobilization of energy through our autonomic nervous systems playing this beautiful game moment by moment, and then my safe is there a threat and my safe is there a threat, and our breath is going to be stimulating that and driving that when we continue, when we can start to access that consciously, and so when we start to breathe slower, we're going to tone the vegas nerve, which more to do with the parasympathetic nervous system, which is at rest and digest primarily eating the past. When we need to think of breathing, I'll just take deep breaths. That's actually increasing my heart rate, which is more the sympathetic nervous system. But that's a beautiful physiological element, is my and sometimes for me, when I've had chronic fatigue and my nembous system have a bit more of that dress in it, I'll have a tendency to crash more and I might need to bring myself up through breath, so I might need to amplify my bring a bitter stress into it. But then consequently a lot of us in that stress anxiety pattern we want to do the opposite. We want to blow the system down so we get more coherent brain ways, send more blood flow up to the brain, and that's what we start to do when we start to reduce breathing, so a lot of us are overbreathing. We need to slow it down, basically, try and target the ideal number, which they found is around six breasts minute, which is you know, some of us are breathing up to over twenty breaths.

And express permanent Wow. That doesn't seem much at all, does it.

But we've got enough oxygen in the body and a lot of us what we're doing over breathing, that's because a lot of us have their discomfort and the sensitivity to carbon dioxide, so we're buying out to march. The carbon dioxide is a very important ingredient to letting that oxygen be released from the blood into the tissues and the brain and so on. So we need to slow it down so we get a greater buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood, so then we get better great blood flow, oxygen flow to the brain, which is then going to help us think a lot clearer, and then we get this down regulation effect, and that's sixth breath per minute has been shown to lean your heart into more of a coherent rhythm, which sends more information to the brain to say there's no lay, there's no lay, So then the brain waves often become more coherent, critical creative thinking come back online, and we just start to downregulate the nervous system to be functioning with less because we don't need more if we're running different story and exercising and so on. But when we're just sitting having conversations or driving, that ideal scenario is that it's also a matter of So there's three elements of breath that are really important. We've got that rhythm. You know how frequently am I breathing, But then we also watch a lot of people breathing. It's very upper chest. So even I might be doing i con't going to tune into six and I'm still I'm not getting that oxygen down to that lower parts of my lungs. So it's also making sure we breathe low into the belly, slow and deep, and that's going to help tune the body into get more of that balanced breath, more green.

So that's how we should be if we're breathing six times a minute, we should be pushing it down into our belly. The belly breath, yeah.

Really light, really slow, really deep, and just that gentle shouldn't hit and always for the nose unless we've got sinus issues. All we're doing particular breath practices where we might be using them now consciously that ideally always for the nostrils really gently and slowly down into the belly and targeting that six breaths, and it might be for some into four out for six. But if someone's breathing at twenty breaths per minute. I have one young lady shoes seeing a car theologists and professional because her heart rate and blood pressure is through the roof and they never asked her about her breath and she is bringing twenty three times per minute. So if we simulate that that's her normal breathing.

Pattern, that's fast and a lot, and.

That's an anxiety pattern, an anxiety stress pattern. So there's that stress response. And they found nothing functionally wrong with her. You're fine. But because she was breathing, her body's going as lines and she's always feeling triggered. Work on that and that slows the whole system down. So it's a matter of tuning the body that low slide D through the nostrils and that just sends this calming signal to the body.

We're back after this shortbreak with more from Rich, how can we get better at implementing breath work into our everyday life. I mean, perhaps we can talk through a few scenarios and how you do it, because I think you know, so many of us know breath work will work. It's just a matter of remembering to do it.

Yeah, here's the funny thing. And this is what I like, brother. I love the fact of breath, which I'm going to sound through amazing influences like Wemfe from the book by jas and As the Breath. Love that book, great book, and even in there's a lot of that information that it's not just going and doing Okay, Cal, I'm going to do a fifteen minute breathing and then the rest of the day breathing, Paul. And the beautiful thing about this is we'd all like to spend less time in our heads. So therefore by we can driving. Because if you sit here right now and if you're listening and you go, okay, I'm going to think about what I'm thinking about and then hold on, I'm going to count my breath. The tense that you can't do both. So if we want to get out of the head, it's sitting right under our nose, and it's the only real way to do it, you know, like to just to sit and sit there when I'm driving. So unless I'm creatively thinking and engaging with my conscious mind, I might be driving and go okay, rather than just letting the auto plotforth from along. Okay, I'm going to change my breath in for six, out for six, or I might do a light little breath hole and just go play with a little bit. And that's a good thing about breath. When I'm cooking, Can I breathe and can I be in the body and the experience and rather trying to think my way into all that stuff, just coming back to bread. And that's where again it becomes more of a lifestyle than work. That's just how we breathe, and by virtue of that, at some point it becomes far more unconscious. When we go from maybe twenty breaths for a minute, we might have to reduce it down to fifteen breast per minute. Then all of a sudden, oh, I'm now down at that six number, and that becomes a bit more unconscious. And how we're breathing through the day will influence how we sleep at night, how we sleep at the dark night. It's going to influence the days. It's this vicious glue. Then once we start getting better breath, then we sleep better, feel better, life better. So it starts to enforce the partner bringing more and more awareness to it to continue it.

I actually have a few little sequences that might go tos and that's the way that I found it a bit easier to implement it into my day. Like if I'm standing in the coffee Q and I'm like, right, I'll do the box breath, you know, and then or if I go to sleep, I'm doing the four in hoole for seven outfre eight. Like I just find now knowing having a few sequences, Have you got any go tos that you like?

Look, I've got several. And it really did again sometimes, you know, being the top person. I was always a bit of a rebel in certain areas, and even with what I do, like I'll just be sitting there, Okay, I'll make up my breath. What if I do this, Oh feel a bit more energy? You know? I don't, so I can start playing it. And that's where we can have a bit of fun with it, you know what I mean. It doesn't have to just be this depending on the personality, but box breathing is great for in that moment when I'm trying to concentrate, my brain is used to be a lot more friendetic, so being able to sit there and starty, I think box breathings is great for that. If I'm feeling, you know, all of a sudden, my body is trying to tell me there is a tiger there and I'm going to a psycho. So either the four seven eight breath like you mentioned, or the physiological side that sip in a big rethm followed by little sip then a long side decktail. Definitely use all of those, and even the heart coherence breathing that six seconds six seconds out. So a lot of times I'm going to give a presentation, I'm like, even before I did this, I just sat down trying to breathe into here, so I start planning more from that heart space rather than handspace, and that might see, you know, ID to some people, but there's so much science behind it. So I sit there and breathing and out through that into the heart, out of the heart, and then just cultivate a feeling of what am I grateful for? Because my brain doesn't know the difference real or imagine, so oh that coffee I have the beach this morning was and then the cells go, oh this is nice.

We all know it.

Yeah, especially it's a good coffee.

Exactly now, you know. I think someone said to me when I was at Eden, Oh, he's so amazing, the amazing breathwork guy at Eden. What sort of sessions do you run there? And what are popular with the guess?

Look at that. It's funny. It's I do. There's three primary sessions I run. I do an intro to meditation, which is it's the one that sometimes it's the black sheep of the family and gets a little bit of love, not a great deal because again people still think of it as this kind of monastic practice, or we think of it trying to stop the mind. Then I do a beautiful vitality breath, which is where we're kind of is a ivitality breath. Then meditation, where it's really about speeding the system up and slowing it right down to the point around breathing twice per minute and really slowing because I'd love to dig I don't just want to expect my nervous systems. And breath practice like a whim hostile. I really like to slant down. And then the most popular is where I do functional breath and cold immersions. And I think maybe it's because I got the word function in front of it, you know, especially a lot of the man go okay, yeah, cool, it's just a bit more open to it, and that's tuning people into correct. I'll go through the three alans of correct breath. But then we do do a very powerful you know, increase in metabolic radar, breathing way beyond a metabolic requirements, super ventilation and get and we literally you lose blood for the product for a party of brain and go to that really or currents within the body. And that's a big favorite of most people because they have that oh my god, the editor I felt that way, and it's really quite amazing what we can experience through for the breath. But we're in with that. I have to be mindful of it. For some people that's so onto their nervous systems, so I try and educate on some should be very gentle, you know, because breath work, despite beings so remarkably and embraced right now, it's like going to the gym. You don't run into the gym and go and grab I'm go the go and do one hundred ylow bench press if we've never done it, and to go there and start to go. It's got really the high anxiety, your heart issues. It's got to be very gentle with it. But that's definitely the favorite. Is that the functional breath and ice.

Yeah, that's great advice. I think just tread gently and find out what works for you. Richard was lovely having you on Extra Healthy Ish and yeah, hopefully well hopefully personally, I'll be back at Eden some David, thank you for joining us.

That's absolutely pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to this chat with rich I hope he gave you some tools to implement in your day. Some ways you can just bring down your stress levels a little bit if you do want to experience Riches classes well experiencing me in the flesh Along to Eden Health Retreat in crumb And Valley. I know I've talked a bit about Eden, but honestly I loved it. It was amazing for well your health and wellbeing anyway. For anything else, head to Body and Sosoul dot com dot au follow us and socials You can DM me at Felicity Harley grab our print edition, which is out in your local Sunday paper. Thanks again for listening, happy breathing, and stay extra healthy is