Take a breath right now.
Did your chest go up and down?
Congratulations, you just failed at breathing.
Don’t worry, my guest today on the show will set you straight.
Her name is Belisa Vranich. She’s a clinical psychologist who has made a career re-training people on how to breathe correctly and in her latest book, Breathe, she provides a step-by-step program to help people breathe better.
Today on the show, Belisa explains all the ill health and psychological effects of poor breathing, like increased stress, poor sleep, poor mental function, and even poor digestion, as well as why so many people mess up this seemingly simple and automatic bodily process.
She then walks listeners through how to take a proper breath and even shares some exercises you can do to train yourself to breathe better and improve your all-around health.
This is an extremely practical podcast, and you’re going to feel great after you do the breathing exercises Belisa lays out.
Show Highlights
- Health issues that can result from poor breathing
- The ways we screw up our breathing
- Vertical vs horizontal breathing
- A simple exercise to test if you’re breathing correctly
- How poor breathing leads to poor sleep
- The relationship between our breathing and stress
- A primer on our breathing muscles
- The age where kids adopt poor breathing techniques
- Posture and breathing
- The breathing cues we can take from animals
- Why you should be “belly breathing”
- Exercises to improve your breathing
- How you’re exhaling wrong, and how to do it right
- A primer on your pelvic floor, and its importance in breathing
- How breathing affects your digestion
- What is an ideal breathing cadence?
Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast
- Air hunger
- What Every Man Needs to Know About Sleep
- 22 Ways to Get a Better Night’s Sleep
- Diagram of your breathing muscles
- The Ultimate Guide to Proper Posture
- Wake Up Like an Animal
- Cat-Cow yoga pose
- Be a Regular Guy: Improving Your Daily Constitutional
Listen to the Podcast!
