#323： Improve Your Breathing, Improve Your Health
Episode Stats
Summary
Belisa Vranich is a clinical psychologist who has made a career retraining people on how to breathe correctly. 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. She then walks listeners through how to take a proper breath and even shares some exercises you can do to improve your all-around health.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So stop what
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you're doing right now and take a deep breath. Okay. Did your chest go up and down when you
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did that? If so, congratulations, you just failed at breathing. But don't worry, my guests
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today on the show will set you straight. Her name is Belisa Vranich. She's a clinical
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psychologist who has made a career retraining people on how to breathe correctly. And in
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her latest book, Breathe, she provides a step-by-step program to help people breathe better. Today
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on the show, Belisa explains all the ill health and psychological effects of poor breathing
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like increased stress, poor sleep, poor mental function, and even poor digestion, as well
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as why so many people mess up the seemingly simple and automatic bodily process. She then
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walks listeners through how to take a proper breath and even share some exercises you can
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do to train yourself to breathe better and improve your all-around health. This is an extremely
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practical podcast and trust me, you're going to feel great after you do the breathing exercise
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Belisa lays out and you're going to feel really great to take your first proper breath, probably
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since you were a baby. After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash breathe
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where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
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Thank you for having me. I'm psyched to be here.
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So you wrote a book called Breathe, the simple revolutionary 14-day program to improve your
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mental and physical health. It's all about breathing, which is this bodily function that
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we all take for granted and you think you can't screw it up, but you can. We'll talk about how you
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do that. But you're a clinical psychologist and sometime in your career, you got into researching
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the importance of breathing and how to breathe effectively and how to retrain people to breathe
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effectively. I'm curious, how does a clinical psychologist start studying this body function
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Well, not only was I dealing with my own stress, so I eventually got to look at my breathing as part
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of what was affecting my stress, but I was always looking to see as a psychologist how you make that
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mind-body connection. So most of us go around and we have the labels for all the things that are wrong
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with us. We have lack of closure. We have learning disabilities. We have daddy issues. Whatever it
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is that's going on with us, we know the words for it. We really don't integrate it and fix it as well
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as we could. And I've always said to my patients, believe it or not, my clinical patients, that
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understanding is overrated. If you take the understanding about what's going on with your mind
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and don't actually change it and integrate it with your body, then all you're doing is having
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the same problems, but understanding it intellectually. So I found that using the breathing
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clinically helped you be able to actually gain that closure or heal from that trauma. Or most importantly
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for me is take that anxiety that now you understood so well and actually calm your body and get over it.
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Wow. And you also mentioned before we got on the show, your father actually had some health
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Yes. Well, older adults, this happens to most older adults, is that they end up having a lot of
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residual air in their bodies because they don't exhale well. So they always feel this feeling,
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it's called air hunger, like they can't take a deep breath and it's just because they haven't
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exhaled well. My dad ended up getting what's called vascular dementia, which is not enough
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oxygen to the brain. He was a history professor and a writer. So if you can think about getting
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dementia is for someone who lives off his memory and facts and history is really, really tragic. And it
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was an excruciatingly difficult situation to see him deteriorate. And as I was sort of healing from
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that, I really studied what was going on with vascular dementia and how are we breathing? Are
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we breathing enough? Do we just give it lip service and not really do it well? Is it just breathe like we
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hear in songs or is there something that we could do better? So that's actually the personal part of
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it. Well, let's talk about it. So how do we screw up this thing we don't even think about doing,
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right? And we do, we really screw it up. Right. So what does a wrong breath look like?
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So we screw it up by making it anatomically incongruous. We actually screw it up by not using
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the muscles we were designed with to breathe. And we start using other muscles that were never meant
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to be primary breathing muscles. So, you know, it's, it's not, um, I tend not to be very woo woo. I
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tend to be very practical and science driven in what I do. And if you look at human anatomy, we're built
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to breathe in a way that we're not breathing anymore. You look at the rest of the planet, it's breathing
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the right way. I mean, the rest of the planet, meaning, um, all the other animals on the planet.
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Um, and they're breathing, widening in the middle where the biggest part of their lungs are,
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and then narrowing in the middle where the biggest part of our lung, where the biggest part of the
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lungs are. Um, and we have taken the breath, which should be a horizontal breath, meaning expanding
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and contracting in the middle. And we've pushed it to the tops of our bodies and we use our shoulders
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to inhale, which is completely ridiculous. So we're taking more of a vertical breath than we are
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a horizontal breath that makes sense with our bodies. So we've completely screwed it up. And
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because breathing is so important, it's really the baseline for your health. It screws up everything
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in our bodies from our pH and acidity to our back health and stomach health and ability to sleep and
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relax. It's really kind of fascinating the way the whole thing crumbles when you take the base away.
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So, yeah, we'll get into some of these, these downsides more in specifics, more in detail here
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in a bit. But so, so our listeners, they can do like a little, I guess a quick exercise for them to
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take a breath, right? And if their shoulders and chest are rising, that means they're, they're failing
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at breathing, right? So what it is, is what I want you to do. So Brett, you can do this in listeners as
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well is come off the back of your chair. So don't lean on the back of your chair. So come so that
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you're sitting up nice and straight at the front of your chair and take an inhale, take an inhale
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through your mouth, big inhale and feel your body. It's probably going to go up on the inhale,
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inhale. And it's like this vertical breath, your shoulders go up and everything kind of stretches
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upwards. So take a look at that. That is a vertical breath. And that's how probably nine out of 10
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of us breathe that vertical breath. So how you should be breathing is actually shoulders, not
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moving, not stretching upward. You should inhale and expand horizontally. So it's that vertical breath
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that nine out of 10 people take that is creating all these problems that is really a fail when it
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comes to breathing. Okay. We'll, we'll talk more about the correct breathing method. So these downsides,
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so one of them, like the exhale part for your father led to a form of dementia. You talk about
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pH balance, people not being able to sleep well. Like how does like our breath, our poor breathing
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lead to poor sleep? It's incredible that it, it goes from how badly you breathe to not being able to go
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to sleep at night. So the way you breathe is, is tied to your neurology. So the only way your brain
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figures out how it should feel or what should, should be telling the rest of your body is
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neurologically. And the neurology is the breathing. So when you think of the link between your body and
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your mind, it is the breathing. So when you're breathing vertically, your vagus nerve tells your
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brain that you should be on high alert. So it really doesn't matter what you're doing in your life. If
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you're continuing to breathe up and down, your neurology is on high alert, which means pretty much that
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your heart rate is higher, your blood pressure might be higher, your cortisol stress hormone may
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be higher, and your immune system is lower just because you're breathing up and down and not in a
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horizontal way. So what happens is that your body's on high alert all day long. And then when you want
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to flip the switch and go to sleep, it's saying, uh-uh, I've been on high alert all day. It's going to
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take me a lot longer than you want to be able to go to sleep. That's interesting. And so like that
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increased cortisol level as well, like causes, just wreaks havoc on lots of other things. It
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doesn't allow you to recover from exercise as well. Exactly. It does a lot of things to your brain.
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I mean, so isn't that all goes to poor breathing? Exactly. Because that is the link between the two
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things. We always think that, well, you know, it might be a supplement, which there's some amazing
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supplements out there. It might be, you know, more water, being hydrated better. Yes, that's good.
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But the one main thing it is, is how you're breathing. It's how you're breathing because
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your neurological system, your vagus nerve is going to see where you're breathing from,
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where in your body, not how much oxygen is in your body, not necessarily the pace of your breath as much,
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but it's more about, are you breathing using your diaphragm? Are you breathing using the biggest part
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of your lungs that are in the middle of your body? So that's how your body calms down. And if you're
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on high alert all day, breathing vertically, there's no way you're going to be able to turn
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yourself off and sleep at night. There's no way you're going to be able to get your cortisol down
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quickly because it's been jacked all day long. And that's probably why you might feel chronically
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stressed out too, because you're just breathing in that upper part of your chest.
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Sure. And because your body's hearing that you need to be stressed out because, you know,
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no matter where you are, it's thinking you're in a war zone. And again, the fatigue comes because
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not only is our acidity thrown off by that, our pH thrown off by our bad breathing, which makes your
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adrenals work over time, but also because you're in high alert all day long, which is exhausting.
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Right. So this is kind of interesting. So the vertical breathing is a breathing that we do
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for like fight or flight situations. It's not necessarily that it's bad. It's just bad that you do it all
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the time. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, if you're out, you know, doing something where you need to be
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taking small breaths and paying attention intently. So think about, I mean, there's lots of situations
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where you have to take small breaths and think about what you're doing intently. If you're a surgeon,
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if you're a tattoo artist, if you're a sharpshooter, there's lots of careers that require you to be able
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to take small breaths and have intense focus, but you can't breathe that way all the time.
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You actually have to take breaks and go back into an expansive breath that calms you down and calms
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your blood pressure and your heart rate, or else your body's going to suffer and it's going to
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complain. Right. And in addition to these, you know, physiological bad effects of poor breathing,
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you know, people forget that our brain, like the thing that makes our body work and gives us
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consciousness and everything like it runs on oxygen, like uses most of the oxygen. And if
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you're not getting enough, then you're probably gonna have. Yeah. Oxygen is cell fuel. So you can
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be eating all the best things out there, but you need oxygen to be able to break down nutrients. You
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know, you run on it for sure. Although I don't focus as much on oxygen because most people, I'd say
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most people, if you use, if you look at their oxygen, they're in the high nineties, but you do
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have folks that have very constricted breathing that it does take an effect on their oxygen. For me,
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what's most important is your neurological system and your breathing muscles. And in general, you never
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hear about breathing muscles and you do have breathing muscles. In fact, you have lots of them and they're
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really important. Yeah. And you mentioned one of the diaphragm is a big one. Diaphragm is a huge
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one, metaphorically and physically it is. And most of us don't even know exactly. We know sort of where
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it is in the body, but we really don't know what it looks like. If you look at pictures of it, it just
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looks like this weird squid with a lot of tentacles and you just can't figure out exactly where it's
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positioned in your body. Or if you look at, you know, Heimlich maneuver posters in your, in your
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takeout, you know, how to, how to do the Heimlich on someone, it's got like a little red line. So
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most of us don't understand. And you can do this right now is that if you put your fingers right at
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the bottom of your ribs in the front of your body, your diaphragm is connected to the very bottom of
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your ribs. So keep walking your fingers around the outside of your ribs and you can actually walk
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them all the way around. Once you get to your back, you're going to hit some, you know, back fat or
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muscles, but your diaphragm really goes all the way around your body and it separates
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your thoracic cavity from your digestive organs. So it really is a cross section of your entire
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middle of your body. So think about that. I usually use a vegetable strainer when I'm talking to people,
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when I'm teaching, take a vegetable strainer, turn it upside down and flatten it. That's how big your
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diaphragm is. It's a small pizza or a Frisbee. The thing is huge muscle that's right underneath your
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heart and right above all your digestive organs. It's, it's really the starship enterprise of your,
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of your whole body. Right. And besides the diaphragm, what other muscles do we use when
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we breathe or should be using when we breathe? Should be using. Well, your intercostals are
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one of them and we don't think about intercostals, but they're the tiny little muscles that there's
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two layers of them in between all your ribs. So your intercostal muscles, they work a lot. They
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work with the inhale, but more with the exhale. Your obliques, certainly all your abs and even
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the mysterious pelvic floor should be engaged when you breathe. Right. So it's a lot of different
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muscles that go, you know, all over the very middle and underneath of your body. Okay. So let's
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talk about like how, okay, breathing, like we come out of the womb knowing how to breathe. And you talk
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about in the book, you look at most kids or toddlers or babies, like they breathe like they're
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supposed to. It's a horizontal. They don't do the vertical thing. So how do we go from that
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to becoming adults that just don't know how to breathe anymore?
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Okay. So usually I say that the changing point is between ages of five and 10. So I've spent,
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you know, a lot of time looking to see when these things changed because babies can't breathe with
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their shoulders. They can't breathe vertically. They have no choice. So I never use them as an example.
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I say, look at a five-year-old or a six-year-old. Usually they're still breathing well. They're using
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their diaphragms. They will expand in the middle and contract in the middle like they should take
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that same child four or five years later, and they're breathing vertically and they're bracing
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their bellies. So a series of things happens. And I want our listeners to think about their own
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lives. And I want you to think about yours as to what could have happened to get you to be a
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vertical breather. So one thing that happens is that you start sitting a lot. Think about you're five
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years old. You go to school and that's when sitting starts happening. Before that, you're rolling
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around. You're in the sandbox. You're, you know, having a good time. You start sitting. And once you
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start sitting, you get less air in your body. You get less movement in your body. And it almost starts
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pushing your breathing from the middle to the top of your body. The posture in which you sit,
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usually with your shoulders internally rotated, maybe a little bit of forward head posture,
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also affects your breathing. And they say posture affects your breathing up to 30%. And then starts
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the gripping of your belly. And it could be that you're bracing because you're trying to feel
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prepared. It could be that you're sucking it in because you feel chubby. Or it could be fear where
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you're gripping your body out of fear of what's going on around you. So those types of things, in addition
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to waistbands, bra straps, having injuries in the middle of your body, just little ones like
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falling off a skateboard or a, or a sled or something where you hit the middle of your body
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and you don't want to take a big inhale because it hurts. You look at your parents, they're breathing
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vertically. You look at commercials, everyone's breathing vertically. You look at fitness magazines,
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no one's ever taking a lower body breath in a fitness magazine. So the narrowing of the
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waist that you see in your parents, that you see in advertisement, as well as your own gripping,
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your own little belly, and then waistbands, compression garments, you end up with a vertical
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breath. Wow. So we've talked about what a vertical breath looks like. And let's go into detail what a
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horizontal breath looks like. So you told us to kind of breathe in your lower body. Is it a matter
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just filling your belly with air? Is that like a good cue to start off with?
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It's a good cue, but I also like to back up because the first time I was told to take a
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belly breath, I did was what most people are going to do, which is say, why would I ever want to do
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that? Why am I actually going to want to poke my belly out and look heavier? You know, good grief.
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I've been sucking it in for two decades. Why would I ever want to let it out? What happens if I can't
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suck it back in again? So the point is that when you take a belly breath, there's no air actually going
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into your belly. All you're doing is letting the middle of your body, your belly expand because
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that way your diaphragm gets engaged, lowers and makes more space inside your thoracic cavity for
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air. So the belly breath is really in getting your diaphragm engaged because your diaphragm will follow
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your belly and flatten out and create space inside your thoracic cavity. So it's not that you're
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breathing into your stomach. It's not that you're actually would be make your middle and your abs
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stronger by breathing this way. But the belly breath is the beginner's breath. But keep in mind that
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later on, much later, once this becomes more natural, and it will, you'll just want to expand your body
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360 degrees all the way around. So your back opens up a little bit, your sides definitely open up,
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your middle opens up a tiny bit, but not to the extent of that beginner's belly breath.
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But your goal is to have 360 degrees all the way around widen with your shoulders not moving at all.
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Right. And when you look, you said that in the book, when you look at animals, like that whole part of
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that core basically expands when they take a breath. And that's what makes the whole thing really
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riveting for me is as animals on this planet, like we are, we're the only ones that are breathing in
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this crazy ass backwards way, using our shoulders, the smallest part of our lungs and wreaking havoc
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on everything inside of us. So all you have to do is look at, you know, go in your backyard and look at
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your, your cat, your dog, your goat, whatever animal you have in your backyard or in your house,
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it can be a fish, it can be a bird. They're all breathing with the movement being in the middle
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of their bodies, where the biggest part of their lungs are. We're the only like dumbest ones on
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the planets that are moving our shoulders, trying to get oxygen in by shrugging up and down and up
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and down. So you talk about in the book, a good way to become aware of this lower body breath when
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you first start out is, you know, lying on the floor or your bed and putting books on your belly.
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Yes. And just, and if you can see those rise up, it means you're, you're doing a good job.
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Excellent. That's exactly it. So because I come, I I'm a gym rat. I come from a gym background
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and I want to know about muscles. So when you start treating something that's always been a little bit
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vague and mysterious, like breathing, and you start talking about muscles, it makes a lot more sense to
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people. And to me as well, when I inhale, I want to be able to be using my diaphragm. So if you inhale
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and push those books away from your body, just like any sort of rep you would do at the gym on the
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exhale, you let them fall and you start thinking, Oh, this is engaging my diaphragm. I'm using my
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intercostals, my obliques. So it becomes a muscular workout, not this vague, just breathe,
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you know, kind of thing that you do. It's more about, I'm actually working out my muscles. I'm
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doing something that feels more like, like PT or like a gym workout. And how do you move on from,
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you know, you know, filling, doing the belly breath, like what's the next step, like in your
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training regimen to get you to the point where you're using your back or your obliques as well,
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letting those expand and fill out. Great. Well, one thing you just said, that's really important is
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the first breath you should take should be on the ground because when you lie down, it's really
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hard to take a vertical breath. You're almost forced to take a horizontal breath. So your breathing at
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night actually should be a little bit better than your breathing during the day. Even though since
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we're not sleeping, you know, way enough, more than, you know, as much as we should, um, it's not
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really helping us for during the day, but you should start on with your back on the ground where you
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inhale, you fill your belly. If you'd like that analogy, you push the books away and on the exhale,
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you're letting it fall and you're almost squeezing your middle and squeezing out all the air. So once
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that starts making sense, you can come up and I have people often do cat cow from yoga and cat cow.
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If you're not familiar with it is that cow is letting your belly, you're on all fours. You're letting
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your belly drop. You're looking up towards the sky. It looks a lot like the cow creamer that
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a lot of people have, uh, you know, for your milk or your almond milk or your soy milk, whatever it
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is. Um, exhale is cat. It's sort of your scary Halloween cat. And again, these are not my words. This
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actually comes from yoga where you arch your back, you look down towards your belly button, you squeeze
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your middle and you exhale. So you alternate between those two where you inhale, you drop your belly, you
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expand your body, you look up, you take an inhale, you roll your back, back goes up towards the ceiling.
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You look like a scary Halloween cat. Look at your belly button and exhale. So that's almost exactly
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the same movement you should have when you're lying on your back. You take that and then do it in a
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chair. So all these things are exactly the same. As far as the movements, they're just in different
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positions to see which one sticks with you. So when you sit up and go to a chair, you're thinking,
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this is like cat cow, but seated. It's sort of like being on my back, giving a big belly breath
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and then exhaling, you sort of lean back and squeeze belly button towards your spine. So what you want to
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do is think about breathing horizontally. You tip forwards, you let your belly go, you inhale, you
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expand your body. Then you roll back, you roll your hips underneath you, squeeze belly button towards
00:23:22.200
your spine. So now you've got it so that you know how to breathe when you're lying down, you're retraining
00:23:27.860
your body to breathe the way it used to now when you're seated. And the hardest one to do, so I don't
00:23:35.040
tell people try this one first because it's the hardest one, is standing up. When you stand up, you do the
00:23:40.360
same movement as you do when you're sitting, which is that you bump your butt back as if you're doing
00:23:45.320
Valsalva when you're lifting or, you know, if you're taking this, if you're a girl and you're
00:23:50.460
taking a selfie, you'll see everybody bumps their butt back, selfie butt. So you inhale, tip your butt
00:23:55.720
backwards, fill your belly up, and then on the exhale, take your hips and put them underneath you
00:24:01.060
and squeeze. Now granted, in the beginning, this is a very big movement and you look a little crazy
00:24:06.920
doing it. So I recommend when you're by yourself to do this big movement of moving forwards and
00:24:12.980
expanding, exhaling and squeezing. But then when you're in public, you just do a small movement.
00:24:19.320
Your shoulders don't move. You inhale, let your belly go, or if you're really thin, you have to
00:24:25.040
actually push your belly out. Exhale, you narrow your body. And that's how you do it standing up.
00:24:31.320
So once you have that lower body breath and it starts to make sense and it starts to feel more
00:24:37.140
natural, that's when you can start doing the harder exercises and start getting your breathing
00:24:42.240
muscles to be strong. I love that. Yeah, I'm doing the butt back thing. It's the same,
00:24:46.500
I guess the same movement I would do when I'm setting my back for a deadlift. That's kind of
00:24:50.640
what I imagine. Exactly. It's Valsalva. I usually say Valsalva butt or selfie butt,
00:24:54.780
and everybody in the audience understands one or the other. Gets it. All right. So besides,
00:25:01.020
okay, let's talk about, we've talked about inhaling. The thing I have trouble with, because I don't think
00:25:05.620
about it all that much, and you mentioned your father's experience of not exhaling enough as he gets
00:25:10.240
older, and that's a problem that all older people have. It's like exhaling, right? Is it just like,
00:25:15.320
usually I just think it was just like letting the air out, but the way you describe it, it's more of
00:25:19.220
forcing the air, actually using your muscles to force that air out of your lungs.
00:25:24.100
So I've got two things going on here with the exhale. Is that one, the idea of exhale and let go
00:25:30.940
has screwed us. Because exhale, let go means you just open your mouth or just let air go out of your
00:25:37.480
body very passively, right? It's not really an exhale. And the fact is you should be inhaling and
00:25:44.620
relaxing your body and exhaling and giving it a squeeze. It's the opposite of what we've been
00:25:50.180
taught. So just let me go into that a second in that usually you're told exhale, let go, and that's
00:25:56.600
when you'll let your body relax. And sometimes people even let their bellies go on the exhale,
00:26:02.840
which makes no sense at all anatomically. So what I want you to do is inhale, relax, and expand,
00:26:09.900
and then exhale, actually squeeze. That let go is an intellectual let go, not a physical let go.
00:26:19.320
It's let go of tension, let go of irritability. It's not let go of the middle of your body,
00:26:26.580
because if you just let go of the middle of the body, you're not exhaling well. So you can try this
00:26:31.320
right now is that take an inhale any way you want to. And now on the exhale, just let go.
00:26:37.820
And now actually at the end of that exhale, stop, and now squeeze your belly and get all the rest of
00:26:45.020
the air out. You're going to notice, oh my gosh, I had so much extra air left. Did you do that?
00:26:51.060
I did it. No, but you're right though. Whenever I've noticed myself when I exhale is I'll just relax
00:26:56.700
my stomach. That's what I naturally want to do, but that's not.
00:27:00.820
So the exhale, if you're a vertical breather, the exhale is collapsing.
00:27:06.960
When you're a horizontal breather, the exhale is narrowing and wringing out. So it's a completely
00:27:13.600
different concept. And you can think about that right now, because anybody who's listening and
00:27:19.120
you, Brett, is that you used to be a vertical breather. And after this podcast, you are going
00:27:23.620
to be well on your way to being a horizontal breather. So before, when you were a vertical
00:27:28.520
breather, you would inhale up and you would exhale down and collapse. Right?
00:27:34.780
Now I want you to inhale and expand and exhale, try to squeeze the air out of your body and make your
00:27:42.240
middle narrower and actually use your abs a little bit, which by the way, this is the reason why you
00:27:49.080
end up having a much stronger core when you're a horizontal breather.
00:27:54.220
Because you're getting an ab workout while you're exhaling.
00:27:57.780
But ab workouts the way you never have before, because I have people who come in to see me and
00:28:02.100
they're shredded. They have nine packs and just like beautiful, beautiful abs. And they're completely
00:28:08.360
just shredded and have gorgeous middles, but they can't inhale because they have a muscular core set
00:28:15.100
and they can't exhale because they can only go to bracing. They can't actually go to squeezing
00:28:20.200
out. So you end up having a really strong core where it matters deep down inside. So for instance,
00:28:27.200
if you plank, and I plank all the time, is that you'll find your plank gets much longer and it's
00:28:35.660
And you also mentioned one of the muscles we bring in when we exhale is these, you know,
00:28:40.240
as you said earlier, the mysterious pelvic floor muscles. What's going on there?
00:28:46.000
Exactly. What's going on there? Well, let me, let me ask you this. How many muscles in your pelvic
00:28:53.000
Uh-huh. Most people don't, or they say one and they make a little squeezing motion with their hand.
00:28:57.260
And the fact is that there's about 20 muscles in your pelvic floor. There's your proper,
00:29:03.160
your small pelvic floor, which has a few muscles. And then there's all the muscles that attach
00:29:07.460
and support your pelvic floor. So altogether you have about 20 muscles. That is a lot of muscles in
00:29:14.620
your pelvic floor. And your pelvic floor is not as big as your diaphragm, but it's almost as big
00:29:22.140
as your diaphragm. So if you're thinking that your diaphragm is the size of a Frisbee, your pelvic floor
00:29:27.740
is a little bit smaller. And it's actually connected to your diaphragm by your psoas muscles.
00:29:35.640
So it's interesting. You'd never think that your pelvic floor has anything to do with your
00:29:40.780
breathing. It's so far away from your lungs. Why would you ever have to think about your pelvic
00:29:45.360
floor when you're breathing? But the fact is that when you're breathing well, you're using your entire
00:29:50.840
body and so many muscles to inhale and exhale. So just think about this. When you inhale, I want you
00:29:58.840
to relax your glutes and relax your pelvic floor. Okay. And on the exhale, I actually want you to
00:30:06.500
squeeze your lower abs and contract your pelvic floor. And let's back up for a second. When I say
00:30:12.640
contract or expand or relax your pelvic floor, I'm actually talking about your bicycle seat.
00:30:19.420
So it's the part of your body that hits the bicycle seat. And the beginner's pelvic floor
00:30:26.260
contraction, it's not the perfect pelvic floor contraction, but the beginner pelvic floor
00:30:30.640
contraction is you can squeeze as if you're trying not to pass gas, or you can squeeze as if you're
00:30:36.000
trying to stop urine midstream. Right. The urine one, the cue works for me.
00:30:40.740
Yeah. And that's a couple muscles. But as you get better at doing this, you'll realize,
00:30:46.120
oh my gosh, I have muscles in front of that. I have muscles to either side. I have muscles in back.
00:30:52.460
You really have, again, visualize that smaller Frisbee. There's a lot of muscles that have to do
00:30:58.720
with your pelvic floor. It's interesting with pelvic floor muscles is that we're seeing so much pelvic
00:31:05.320
floor dysfunction right now, and we're not getting good instruction on how to take care of our pelvic
00:31:10.320
floor. And if you're someone right now who's saying, oh, pelvic floor, mine's fine. Or I haven't had a
00:31:16.160
baby through a vaginal delivery. I don't have to worry about this. You're dead wrong. Pelvic floor
00:31:22.540
problems and pelvic floor herniations affect people who are long distance runners, who lift weights or
00:31:29.660
CrossFit, who are overweight or obese, or who are smokers. So that's a lot of people who end up having
00:31:38.060
dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles often and who need to know how to breathe to strengthen their
00:31:44.540
pelvic floor muscles. Right. And so you're contracting those pelvic floor muscles to sort of
00:31:48.740
squeeze that air out. So I mean, I'm imagining it's sort of like your diaphragm and your pelvic floor
00:31:54.380
muscles acting sort of like a billows a little bit, right? The diaphragm expands to fill your lungs up
00:32:01.180
with air, and then your pelvic floor contracts to push it out. Yes, it does work that way. And if you
00:32:06.440
were to put your hands one, you know, with some space one on top of the other, when your diaphragm
00:32:11.280
flattens out, when your top hand flattens out and makes space in your thoracic cavity, it also pushes all
00:32:17.900
your digestive organs down. So your pelvic floor has to relax to accommodate for all those organs. So you're
00:32:25.580
already doing this, by the way, when you're doing a belly breath, you're already doing this, but I want to
00:32:29.600
bring more attention to it. On the exhale, your body narrows and your pelvic floor muscle comes up
00:32:37.400
in your body. So your whole body narrows and your pelvic floor contracts as well. And it should feel
00:32:43.680
synchronized. So on the inhale, I want you to think about rocking your hips forward. You inhale, you relax
00:32:51.380
your glutes, you relax your pelvic floor, you relax your belly. Exhale, you squeeze your ribs,
00:32:58.380
your abs, and you contract your pelvic floor. It actually should make a lot of sense. And one of
00:33:04.740
the reasons most women haven't done Kegel exercises, although we know we should, as you're told by your
00:33:11.720
gynecologist after birthing, is that we're not told where the breathing happens. And if your diaphragm and
00:33:18.360
your pelvic floor are connected, you have to know in which direction each of them are going. So it's pretty
00:33:24.460
complicated unless you have a picture in front of you. I do have a picture in my book. I forgot on
00:33:29.000
what page. But all you have to know is that on the inhale, when you rock forwards, you relax your glutes,
00:33:36.620
relax your bicycle seat, relax your belly. And on the exhale, when you sort of roll back and tip your
00:33:43.280
whole body back, you squeeze your lower abs and you squeeze your pelvic floor, almost pulling it away
00:33:49.640
from your seat. Okay. So you just now, you gave me a glimpse to another insight or another benefit of
00:33:55.560
proper breathing is this idea that your diaphragm pushes down on your intestines when you breathe in
00:34:01.480
and then your pelvic floor pushes up on them when you exhale. It's like you're giving your intestines
00:34:05.340
a massage. I'd imagine that helps with digestion, right? I am loving you right now. Exactly. It's
00:34:12.780
exactly it. So when people say, you know, how is my breathing supposed to affect my digestion? It's
00:34:18.720
not a miracle. It's not magic. It's really just anatomy. Exactly what you just said is that your
00:34:26.540
diaphragm supports something called peristalsis. And peristalsis is that wave-like motion that has to do
00:34:32.700
with digesting that your organs do. Now, if you're not using your diaphragm to breathe, if you're using your
00:34:37.980
shoulders, your stomach isn't getting that supportive massage from the diaphragm that's right above it
00:34:43.580
and your pelvic floor that's right below it. So think about how happy your digestive organs get when
00:34:50.160
all of a sudden they're getting massaged from the top and from the bottom of you breathing with the
00:34:55.220
horizontal breath. One of the things that happens almost immediately is that your acid reflux can actually
00:35:01.600
go away or get much less because now you're using your diaphragm like the secondary esophagus that it
00:35:09.880
was meant to be. That's awesome. That's really interesting. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Well, so
00:35:14.880
besides, we've been talking about breathing technique, but in the book, you also talk about breathing
00:35:18.440
patterns and that you can screw that up too. What are some examples of poor breathing patterns? So
00:35:24.260
this is someone who's doing the vertical breath probably, but the way the cadence of breath might be
00:35:30.060
messed up as well. Sure. Well, when you're breathing vertically, you have no choice but to breathe
00:35:35.700
in a faster, shallower way. You just can't help it. If you're going to get the air that you need,
00:35:40.720
you have to be breathing faster. So most of the time when someone's told to breathe slower and breathe
00:35:48.180
in a pattern that helps, for instance, their heart rate variability, it's hard to do continuously
00:35:55.020
because they are continuing to use the smallest part of their lungs. So that's why I teach you
00:36:00.480
should breathe. Your style of breathing needs to change so that then you can support that slower
00:36:06.760
breathing pattern. And a slower breath usually is a better breath. The best breath, the most coherent
00:36:13.420
breathing pattern is five or six breaths per minute. That's actually the perfect breath. That's what you
00:36:20.200
want. But you can't do that unless you're breathing horizontally with the biggest part of your lungs.
00:36:25.660
So once you have your style of breathing to a horizontal breath, getting your breath to be as
00:36:31.640
slow as possible, that five or six breaths as a goal, that's what you should be aiming for perfectly.
00:36:38.380
That's awesome. Well, Belisa, I'm curious. You've worked with lots of clients on their breathing. Do you
00:36:43.060
have any stories of people whose lives were changed because they just focused on their breathing and became
00:36:48.540
more mindful of it? Oh, so many and so many different ones. I mean, one of the reasons I get
00:36:54.020
up every day and I love what I do, I absolutely love what I do, is I never know who's going to walk
00:36:59.000
in through the door and what problem they're going to have. And for me, it's a challenge. As soon as I
00:37:04.060
get someone and they have something that I don't know why it is, or they've been perplexed, or they've
00:37:08.560
seen so many people, trying to figure it out is kind of like a medical mystery, trying to move them
00:37:14.760
around, figure out if their diaphragm is locked up, if they're traumatized so they're not breathing at
00:37:20.100
all, looking at their style of breathing, breaking that down, and then trying to figure out how I get
00:37:25.460
them to have that aha moment where they fix their breathing and they do it all the time. So I don't
00:37:31.780
know if I can give you one story, but I can tell you that the range of stories has really been
00:37:36.560
fascinating for me. So I've gotten everything from someone who works in a precision sport or a
00:37:44.600
precision career that all of a sudden they're able to do it better. So for instance, putting. If you're
00:37:51.800
a golfer and you don't know how to exhale and you don't know how to breathe horizontally, it's going to
00:37:57.880
affect your short game. If you are an MMA fighter and you don't know how to breathe horizontally, it's going
00:38:05.640
to affect your center of gravity and it's going to affect how quickly you recover when you go to your
00:38:12.080
corner. If you're someone who has panic attacks or anxiety, unless you change your style of breathing,
00:38:20.520
you're going to be on medication and you're going to be struggling with anxiety forever because the
00:38:26.780
medication can help your anxiety, but your neurological system is going to keep you in that anxious state
00:38:32.600
unless you change your breathing. So it's really about the range of people that I've worked with
00:38:38.540
that blows my mind every single day. That's awesome. No, I'll admit I've been doing this for
00:38:44.440
probably about two weeks now, trying to be more mindful about my breath, working on through the
00:38:48.560
exercise and it's helped out a lot. I love it. I do these exercises before I go to bed.
00:38:53.040
And even like when I was in the post office today, standing in line, I was like, all right,
00:38:57.240
let my belly relax a little and then like do the pelvic floor thing when I'm exhaling. So
00:39:02.320
it works. So for those of you who are listening and want to check this out,
00:39:06.660
where can people find out more about your book and your work?
00:39:09.300
Sure. Well, the breathing class is my website or drbelisa.com. And the book is anywhere you buy
00:39:15.840
books. I usually tell people to support their local bookstores. It's also on audio. And then I do
00:39:22.360
Facebook lives and I answer questions when people email all the time. So there's lots of ways to find
00:39:28.300
out about it. You can also go to your public library and take the book out there. I've actually
00:39:32.560
recommend that people do that too, to support their local libraries. And the book pretty much has
00:39:38.180
everything in it that you need. It's not that it's a commercial for breathing. It actually starts,
00:39:43.220
it gives you all the tools that you need, all the exercises that you need from beginner to
00:39:47.560
intermediate to advanced for anyone who either feels like they're not breathing well, intuitively,
00:39:53.600
they know something's wrong, or they just feel like breathing better because they're struggling
00:39:58.400
with COPD, anxiety, or trying to get to sleep at night. Awesome. Well, Belisa Vranich,
00:40:04.400
thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:40:07.780
My guest today was Dr. Belisa Vranich. She's the author of the book, Breathe,
00:40:10.920
the simple revolutionary 14-day program to improve your mental and physical health. It's available on
00:40:15.380
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about her work at
00:40:18.920
thebreathingclass.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash breathe,
00:40:24.020
where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:40:38.320
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:40:42.560
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy this
00:40:46.540
show, have gotten something out of it while you've been listening, I'd really appreciate it if you
00:40:49.480
take time, a minute, give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It really helps us out a lot. As always,
00:40:53.760
thank you for your continued support, and until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay