Nasal Breathing During Exercise

Before we can even contemplate nasal breathing during exercise we must move away from dysfunctional breathing patterns. For example, many people breathe using predominantly upper body accessory muscles instead of primarily using the diaphragm. This is often called chest breathing. Chiefly using these upper accessory muscles equates with scattered thinking and the stress that inevitably ensues. In the long term, this has a massive negative impact on the mind and body. We are much more relaxed and centred if we primarily use the diaphragm, allowing it to fully extend into the abdomen. This leads to massive benefits in all areas of our life especially our health.

A huge proportion of the population is engaging in over breathing or hyperventilation patterns because of modern conditioning and thinking. There is a lack of awareness and understanding of who they are and how they function. They do not know themselves. Changing ones breathing patterns to abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing before we begin exercise whilst nasal breathing is essential. Once we do this our awareness then returns to the second brain, lower Dan Tien or Primal awareness in the gut area. This process may take a number of months depending on how much you have moved away from natural breathing patterns.

Nasal Breathing Benefits

Learning to breathe correctly will improve our health. Learning to breathe through the nose whilst abdominal breathing during exercise can accelerate the process. The following is a short list of benefits:

Optimising oxygenation of blood and therefore all systems of the body;
Re-balancing of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system systems leading to lower or normalised blood pressure and a sense of peace;
Normalises CO2 in the blood. Hyperventilation and over-breathing especially through the mouth decrease CO2 to below health producing limits. Contrary to popular belief CO2 is absolutely essential to stimulate breathing. Most people have a very low concentration of this gas in the body. This produces numerous adverse side effects in organs and tissues of human beings. For example, cell oxygen levels are controlled by alveolar CO2 and breathing. Hyperventilation, regardless of the arterial CO2 changes, causes alveolar hypocapnia (CO2 deficiency), which leads to cell hypoxia (low cell-oxygen concentrations). Remember this:

"All chronic pain, suffering, and diseases are caused by a lack of oxygen at the cell level."
Dr. Arthur C. Guyton, M.D

It is only when CO2 concentrations rise to 20% and above that this gas has adverse effects on human beings. Since the normal air we breathe only contains approximately 0.04% it would be impossible to overdose on this gas during normal breathing and conditions. (Pure CO2 is a toxic gas);

Further benefits of nose or nasal breathing while abdominal breathing:

Reduces physiological stress and therefore anxiety leading to much more therapeutic states. This makes the advanced practice of meditation much easier (see point 5 below);
Nasal breathing and mouth breathing differ very dramatically in the physiological effects produced. For example, there are small amounts of Nitric Oxide (which is a vasodilator and bronchodilator) produced by the sinuses and are taken into the lungs whilst nasal breathing. Obviously, mouth breathing prevents this from happening;
Breathing rates during exercise are much lower for those who abdominal breath through the nose. However, abdominal/diaphragmatic breathing must be relearned first;
Since the parasympathetic nervous system is activated during exercise whilst diaphragmatic breathing through the nose, peak exercise is much less stressful for the body, therefore, reducing the stress hormones of adrenaline and cortisol. This will improve athletic performance and shorten recovery time. (From personal experience it also left me feeling less tired after running several miles compared to traditional mouth breathing).
Brainwave coherence patterns between left and right brain hemispheres were increased towards alpha/meditative states in spite of coherence patterns generally decreasing during periods of stress or exertion.

For both exercisers and non-exercisers, there are many signs and symptoms of poor breathing. I've listed the main ones below.

The most obvious one is that we breath through our mouths;
Almost as obvious is that we chest breath or have formed some sort of similar dysfunctional pattern. Since many people have been breathing this way it tends to go unnoticed. It is, however, as devastating to the body and mind as mouth breathing. It is very important to re-learn how to abdominal breath as we did as children;
Heavy or erratic breathing especially during rest;
Having to take large breaths before speaking;
Nose congestion. Also be aware that repeating or chronic sinus problems represent an imbalance in the body generally. Therefore abdominal breathing through the nose will go a long way towards correcting these imbalances for both internal and external causes. An example of this is below.

Case Study

I once had a client who came for an acupressure treatment because of a sinus problem. At the end among other things, I not only moved his hips back into alignment (unbalanced mental/emotional body or male/female balance) but pointed out to him that someone was causing this imbalance. It turned out to be his brother who was a constant source of stress to him. I taught him how to abdominal breath once again as we all did as children. Abdominal breathing re-centres our awareness back to the gut area and out of the head. It takes us back to that neutral point.

Our resistance to breathing in this way is a measure of how far we have strayed from Self Mastery and therefore our True Purpose. Nasal breathing during exercise is just the icing on the cake, a natural progression of grounding our Higher Self into the body and seeing the lower or false self for what it is, genetic and social conditioning, that is, cellular memory. In fact, that is what all anxiety and fear patterns are, the memory held in our genetics!

Nasal Breathing and Meditation

Both abdominal breathing and diaphragmatic breathing through the nose are excellent ways to keep stress levels lower during exercise. However, this should also be our predominant way of breathing. We naturally move into a more meditative state which is very good for the body and mind. When the body and mind feel good we can then move deeper into who we really are (the soul). We naturally move into a more meditative state. We can move into a more balanced and soulful way of perceiving reality. This is completely different from acting and "being" a conditioned human. That is, thinking you are the tools (body/mind) instead of the realisation you are a soul who uses the body/mind to direct its life.

Moving into our eternal essence is who we really are. This way of being has massive benefits for humanity and therefore the planet in general. There are masters, past and present who have used nothing but the power of abdominal breathing through the nose to move back into their natural state; which is of course Enlightenment or Realisation of the Eternal Self. When we are in this state we are completely fearless. We know without a doubt that we are the Eternal Soul and not the body/mind mechanism. The physiology of our bodies completely changes over time as we re-learn how to abdominal breath and adopt nasal breathing.