Yesterday, I covered how important the quality and quantity of water was to your health. And by health, I mean it’s impact on every single cell and system in your body. (If you missed it, you can find it on the blog here.)
Improve your water supply and you’ll reap big dividends from doing so. While you may or may not feel a difference today, this small effect can compound to huge differences over time, like a decade or two from now.
Today, we switch gears into another foundational foundation…the breath.
Yes, there are many great breathing exercises you can do. Vacuum breath, Wim Hof
breath, fire breathing, box breathing, 6-2-7 breathing and so many more. These are great…but not really what I’m talking about today.
What I’m talking about is your default breathing. Like right now, as you’re reading this, clue into your breath. How is it going?
Is it deep or shallow?
Is it through your nose or your mouth?
Is it slow or fast?
Is it full or empty? (Not to be confused with, but commonly is, with deep or shallow.)
How you breathe by default regulates your ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in your blood. How you breathe affects whether you create nitric oxide which then affects your whole cardiovascular system.
These simple things than affect your energy, your mood, your mental clarity, your sleep, your performance in the gym or field, your recovery and more.
(That nitric oxide…even effects your sex life! How many supplements are taken to support NO production when breathing through your nose is a natural way to get this going.)
Ideally, your default breath should be:
Deep
Nose
Slow
Empty
The problem is that you’ve likely built some horrible breathing habits over years and years. There is no overnight fix…
Though a great overnight aid is to place a piece of tape over your mouth in order to assure nose breathing. Highly recommended to give this one a shot! (Probably best not to do without supervision if you have bad sleep apnea. So this is recommended for average people only.)
In addition, working with a variety of deep breathing exercises can help you to reset this habit.
Here’s the good news. Once you’re doing this kind of breathing regularly then you’re good to go! This habit will support you for years and years to come.
Thinking about this from a Chinese Medicine perspective, the breath is a main source of Qi. Qi is your everyday energy that you use for everything you do whether working, playing, working out and more.
If your breathing is not ideal then you cannot have ideal energy throughout your day.
Young people may not notice this…but it will catch up to them in their later years.
And that is why I consider breath one of the two foundational foundations.
For more information on breathing, and some of the exercises that can help to reset your breathing habits, checkout Upgrade Your Breath.