Functional Breathing: The Foundation of Health
How you breathe is how you live! Virtually nothing dictates your state of being in every moment more than THE BREATH. How you breathe profoundly impacts every single system in your body and its health and function. There is no aspect of your body and mind that is not influenced by how you breathe- Your nervous system health and stress resilience, your emotional states, oxygen utilization and energy levels, focus and mental acuity, how well you sleep, your facial structure and oral health, your ability to regulate your body composition and lose excess weight, your cardiovascular health, inflammation levels in the body, your structural stability, your athletic performance and capabilities and beyond!
Work with Matt, Oxygen Advantage Advanced Instructor & Certified Soma Breathwork Instructor, and learn to optimize how you breathe to improve your performance in all areas of your life. Matt offers one on one private consultations, group, athletic, and corporate workshops and coaching, functional breathing classes, and yogic breathwork journeys (including his very special Deep Bass Breathwork Journey, featuring the best in underground rave music, like one would hear at world famous transformational festivals like Basscoast & Shambhala)
Healthy, functional breathing is often an overlooked and unconsidered part of people's wellness practices. Even various fitness, breathwork, and yoga modalities fail to consider how breathing impacts the function of the body and mind, how it actually works, and what is going on physiologically in your body during the act of breathing.
The potential downstream effects of healthy, functional, and efficient breathing will be better performance and decision making in all areas of your life. Simply by improving your breathing, you may in turn be giving yourself the foundational component you didn't know was missing in order to begin cultivating the health outcomes you seek.
Healthy breathing results in states of less stress, better sleep, more energy, mental clarity, and emotional control. Those states mean better decision making when it comes to the choices we make that impact our health.
Think of how often we make healthy decisions when we are overly stressed or overly tired.
Generally, a state of subpar energy and excess stress is where a lot of our worst, most impulsive, will power lacking, unhealthy decisions tend to be made.
Your breath is THE fundamental determinant of your physical, mental and emotional state and health.
What is Breathwork?
A conscious and purposeful way of breathing that alters the consciousness and creates a desired state in the body (such as winding down from a stressful situation, getting energized when feeling tired, and even reaching deep meditative and ecstatic states)
What is Breath Hold Training?
Conscious breath hold practices used to reduce the onset of mental/physical fatigue and breathlessness (especially during athletic endeavors), strengthen the diaphragm and breathing muscles, and improve daily/athletic performance. Breath Hold Training can give athletes of any sports a significant competitive advantage and boost in performance!
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Breath Hold Training Helps Us:
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Increase Anaerobic Threshold
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Reduced Onset of Muscle Fatigue
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Increase O2 Carrying Capacity
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Increase Respiratory Muscle Strength
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Maintain Conditioning During Injury
How Well Do You Breathe?
The BOLT Score Assessment
As we hold our breath, CO2 accumulates in the bloodstream. The length of time it takes our brain to react to an increase of CO2 in the blood is directly related to our body's sensitivity to CO2. Our breath hold time offers a useful index of sensitivity to CO2, and our BOLT score is an indirect indicator of sensitivity to CO2 build-up in the blood. Generally, the lower our CO2 tolerance is, the faster our resting breath rate is likely to be, impacting things such as our nervous system and stress tolerance, tissue oxygenation and physical energy levels, and mental acuity.
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The inability to hold the breath for 25+ seconds generally indicated the presence of Breathing pattern disorders (BPD) . The breath hold is performed following a regular exhale and the breath hold time is measured. The time it takes until the participant's first involuntary activity or a contraction of the breathing muscles (throat and diaphragm) is what’s measured (Keisel et al., 2017). This is what the BOLT score measurement is based on.
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BPDs are multi-dimensional. They are made up of a series of biomechanical, biochemical, and psycho-physiological components, so they cannot definitively be diagnosed with a single test. However, among comprehensive screening tests (developed by Kiesel et al.,) the ability to hold the breath is a function that is typically disturbed.
