How to breathe

Due to the global pandemic and the effects of Covid, we’ve thought more about breathing in the past 18 months than we’ve possibly ever done. We talk to breath experts to find out how we can use our breath to maximise our health and fitness

Words Fiona Bugler

We breathe 25,000 a times a day and the way we do it affects our mental and physical health. Good breathing, experts say, can help us to live healthier, happier lives. Breathing is also, of course, fundamental to running, an activity reliant on oxygen flowing efficiently through our body and it can help to relieve race nerves, improve lung capacity and boost performance.

Breathing trends The Just Breathe! trend, published in the 2021 Global Wellness (GWS) Trends Report, highlighted the rise in breathwork as a focal point in wellness. It said: “Creative practitioners are using breathwork in many new ways — from fitness and rehabilitation to relief from trauma and PTSD.”

Breath experts have risen to prominence appearing on podcasts and being featured in the press, including the ‘ice man’ Wim Hoff, who combined breathing techniques with cold water therapy and is the author of TheWim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential, and James Nestor, author of global bestseller, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.

In his book, Nestor “explores the million-year-long history of how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and why we’re suffering from a laundry list of maladies – snoring, sleep apnoea, asthma, auto-immune disease, allergies – because of it.”

A breath of fresh air The GWS report also points to breathing for performance, with initiatives such as intermittent hypoxic training as well as breathing for mental health, and Breath Church, an online conscious breath workshop by ‘breathangelist’ Sage Rader, which encourages people to breathe together online.