The Art of Breathing: Transforming Health and Well-being Through Conscious Breathing

How a Simple Change in Breathing Habits Can Enhance Your Life

With the arrival of winter, our house becomes a haven for tissues. They start as a complete roll and gradually transform into a garden of used tissue pieces scattered everywhere. As the tissues multiply, so does the level of nervousness in the house. Not being able to breathe properly is distressing for the sufferer and those around them. The constant sniffling and sneezing are nerve-wracking and disruptive.

In an attempt to restore peace at home, I decided this year, against all odds, to try to breathe properly from November to May. Following my doctor’s advice, the first step was to stop using nasal drops. This led me to a life-changing book called Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.

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Nestor is an obsessive researcher, and his engaging book presents the findings of his deep dive into the science of breathing. Published at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it highlights how crucial proper breathing is to our health—something we often take for granted.

Since you don’t have time to read it yourself, here’s what I learned from Nestor: The biggest mistake most of us make when breathing is using our mouths. According to many traditions, mouth breathing is the root of all breathing sins because our noses filter, warm, and humidify the air before it enters our bodies. Nestor describes the nose as "the silent warrior: the guard at the gate of our body, the apothecary for our mental distress, the vane of our emotional state."

The second mistake is focusing on inhaling rather than exhaling. Anyone who practices yoga or meditation knows that exhalation is crucial, but many of us don't realize that this focus should extend beyond practice sessions.

Correcting Breathing Habits

In the book, Nestor experiments with various breathing methods, including Pranayama (a yogic method for controlling breath), the Buteyko method for healthy breathing, resonant breathing to relieve stress, and more intense methods like holotropic breathing and Tummo breathing, which can warm the body in extreme cold.

I resisted the urge to pack up and fly to the Himalayas and instead started experimenting with some techniques. The good news is that the more you practice breathing slowly through your nose, the easier it becomes. Another important takeaway is that most people don’t need anything more than access to information to start improving their breathing.

I needed two types of plasters. The first type is for improving breathing. If your breathing improves when you stretch one of your cheeks toward your ear, your difficulty may be due to small nostrils. My method involves sticking one half of the plaster under the glasses next to the nose and stretching the other half towards the ear, lifting the cheek.

Nighttime Breathing Solutions

This method improved my daytime breathing, but what about nighttime, when mouth breathing takes over unconsciously? Here’s where the second type of plaster comes in—regular plasters. I stick one on my mouth at night. Initially terrifying, it quickly becomes a comforting routine that keeps my nose open, allowing for uninterrupted sleep.

Nestor also discusses hyperbreathing, which allows people to endure extreme conditions. However, my focus is on gentle inhalation and deep exhalation through the nose. The recommended goal is 5.5 breathing cycles per minute, with each inhale and exhale lasting about 5.5 seconds. After practicing this, find a comfortable pace for yourself; mine is a four-second inhale and a six-second exhale.

For those who prefer gadgets, there are apps for breathing exercises that use the phone’s camera to measure heart rate in real-time. Alternating nostril breathing is another effective practice.

The Benefits of Conscious Breathing

Five days since I last used nasal drops, the tissue flowers have withered. They’ve been replaced by plaster wraps, which are less dramatic. I breathe better, sneeze less, and sleep more soundly. Breath awareness serves as a bridge between my meditation state and day-to-day functioning.

In a time when we’re trapped at home with various viruses and increased house dust mites, improving our breathing is the quickest and most helpful thing we can do to feel better.