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If you or a loved one suffer from breathing-related conditions such as asthma and allergies, snoring and sleep apnea, or anxiousness, pay particular attention to these. A wellness plan that includes periods of gentle breathing can frequently contribute to reduction of symptoms.
- Breathe through the nose all the time including while eating, speaking and exercising. Don’t do anything faster than you can do it breathing with your nose.
- Maintain an upright posture. Keep the airway vertical and open
- Breathe into the diaphragm, not the chest. Think of the breathing action as originating from the diaphragm muscle under the ribs, not the nose.
- Breathe with a regular, predictable pattern of steady, similar-sized breaths. Minimize disruptions such as sighing, yawning, coughing, throat clearing or breath holding followed by a big breath.
- Breathe like a baby breathes: silently, gently and invisibly. Strong gusts are abrasive to the airway.
- Breathe 8-12 breaths per minute. Unless it’s an emergency, slower light breathing is better than fast breathing.
- Match breathing to activity. When resting, breathe gently using all the principles listed above. During exercise, breathe heavier as needed, then cool down the breathing like you would cool down your muscles to transition back to the rest state.
- Allow breathing to happen without expending energy. Exhale completely but not forcibly. Practice inhaling and exhaling without controlling it.
- Practice relaxation of muscles and thoughts. Tension requires more air. Stop negative thoughts. Think thoughts that engender positive feelings. Embrace instead of defend.
- Increase comfortable breath-hold time intentionally after you have mastered all the other habits.
Breathing Retraining Center offers individual and group training and coaching on self-management techniques to identify and correct poor-breathing habits. Breathing Retraining Center's educational products, courses and coaching are designed to improve breathing skills for people whose issues may be related to habits that have the potential to be improved, as a self-care/wellness activity. Breathing difficulty may be a warning sign of a life-treatening heart or lung condition, infection or other illness. Always check with your doctor about your own situation.
The Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies we teach are an alternative approach and are not the practice of medicine, psychology or a form of psychotherapy, nor are they a substitute for seeking medical or psychological advice from an apporpriate professional health-care provider. We want to make the important distinction between using the Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies for health and well-being and the practice of medicine, psychology or any other licensed health-care profession.
Breathing classes, coaching and other services from Breathing Retraining Center are offered by teachers who are not licensed by the State of California as physicians or other healing-arts practitioners unless so noted. We offer alternative non-medical/non-psychological techniques and our services are considered to be laternative or complementary to the healing arts that are licensed by the State of California.