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Healthy Breathing Habits Foundations
Find out how to increase your respiratory strength and fitness. Develop your immunity and resistance by concentrating on nasal breathing over mouth breathing, and other actions within your control. Raise your confidence in your level of health! ...with breathing retraining
Learn and practicehealthy breathing habits,so you know how to increase and maintainyour respiratory strength and health.
based on Buteyko Breathing principles
When offered live, this class includes four 60-90-minute sessions of breathing-training instruction and up to nine 15-30-minute guided practice sessions with Breathing Educator Lisa Bowen on Zoom from San Francisco.
Breathing for everyday health and vitality:
Educate yourself about what healthy breathing looks like so you can assess your own condition.
Find out how to measure your breathing stats so you can improve them.
Get to know your own breathing pattern, so if it worsens and signals a health decline you will have an early-warning system and possibly be able to address oncoming discomfort or illness earlier.
Build a foundation of healthy breathing habits, and gain the possibility to feel more energy and confidence.
Understand when and why you might be breathing poorly and what you need to do to stop it. Wherever you are starting from now, you can increase your level of breathing fitness.Work toward breathing comfortably and well in all positions – sitting, standing, sleeping, speaking, eating, moving and exercising hard.
Exercise without huffing and puffing. Exercise with ease!
Discover several options to clear congestion when your nose is stuffed from allergies or a cold.
Practice natural tools to relax your breathing when it’s tight.
Explore how to set children up for lifelong healthy breathing habits.
You get:
Four training sessions
Group breathing sessions, depending on format.
Long-term support through the Healthy Breathing Habits Academy private Facebook group
A class portal with training materials on all the breathing exercises and activities presented.
"Excellent course. I have been a mouth breather for many years and the course gave me an understanding of the breathing process and the tools to improve my breathing."
Paddy Cauley
Retired School Principal
"I highly recommend attending one of Lisa Bowen's Buteyko Blitz Weekends or classes that she offers. Lisa gave me many tools that I am slowly trying to incorporate in my life. Lisa is a competent, personable teacher who both provides information and then makes sure you understand what you are learning by having you practice various methods. I am confident attendees will benefit from this method."
C.P.
"Lisa created a welcoming environment where I felt supported sharing my successes and challenges with the breath work. I especially appreciated Lisa's good-humor and attention to detail throughout the course. I highly recommend working with Lisa."
Noreen Cauley
PhD Candidate & Yoga Instructor
"Thank you Lisa for doing this breathing course at a time when nasal breathing is of utmost importance. I enjoyed learning the tools and exercises to easily put into my daily routine!"
Syllabus
SESSION 1: OVERVIEWWhat is healthy breathing and how do you do it?
In this session you will be introduced to what it takes to breathe well. There's a functional way of breathing that produces a lot more energy and ease. We'll concentrate on the biomechanical aspects of breathing this session.
Habit 1: Breathe through the nose all the time Don't do anything faster than you can do it breathing with your nose.
Habit 2: Maintain an upright posture. Keep the airway vertical and open.
Habit 3: Breathe into the diaphragm, not the chest. Think of the breathing action as originating from the diaphragm muscle under the ribs, not the nose.
Introduction to the Corrective Breathing Formula: Breathe with your nose, stop breathing with your mouth and breathe less.
Start where you are. Transitioning from heavy mouth breathing to light nasal breathing.
Breathing activities to explore at home.
SESSION 2: THE RULES OF BREATHINGHow to breathe well while talking, eating, exercising and sleeping.
We'll concentrate on the biochemical aspects of breathing.
Habit 4: 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.
Habit 5: Breathe like a healthy baby breathes: silently, gently and invisibly. Strong gusts are abrasive to the airway.
Habit 6: Breathe 8-12 breaths per minute. Unless it's an emergency, slower light breathing is better than fast breathing.
Habit 7: 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.
Breathing activities to explore at home.
SESSION 3: BREATHING WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWNDealing with colds, oncoming illness, and stressful feelings and situations.
We'll concentrate on the psychophysiological aspects of breathing. Sometimes your breathing is off because something in your life is off! Discover techniques to get your breathing back on track, with the goal to feel better as soon as possible and prevent poor breathing habits from contributing to chronic health problems.
Habit 8: Allow breathing to happen without expending energy. Exhale completely but not forcibly. Practice inhaling and exhaling without controlling it.
Habit 9: Practice relaxation of muscles and thoughts. Tension requires more air. Stop negative thoughts. Think thoughts that engender positive feelings. Embrace instead of defend.
Habit 10: Increase comfortable breath-hold time intentionally after you have mastered all the other habits.
The meeting point of spirituality and breathing retraining.
Breathing activities to explore at home.
SESSION 4: HELPING KIDS IN YOUR LIFE BREATHE BETTER
How kids develop breathing issues, and how to catch it early. This is also relevant for adults to consider how their challenges might have started.
How to foster healthy breathing habits in children, with ideas for practical activities.
About Coach Lisa
Lisa Bowen has been a breathing coach since 2012.
A lifelong asthmatic, she started studying the Buteyko Breathing Technique in 2009 and learned how to teach it two years later.
In 2012 she founded Breathing Retraining Center and has taught classes around the San Francisco Bay Area. Lisa is a third-generation San Franciscan, now living in Marin County, a half-hour drive north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
'"I am loving teaching these online classes. Between the lectures and the morning practice sessions, it allows me to check in and see how students are doing up to four days a week and really make sure they're getting it!"
Find out more about Lisa here.
This class is for people who want to improve their breathing habits as a complementary, self-care, wellness activity.
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.