5 Things I Learned From My Breathing Coaches

Breathing is something we all do. But we are rarely taught how to do it.

Breathing is something we all do. But we are never taught how to use it as a tool. To calm down, to de-stress, to focus, to feel present.

The breath is what links the mind and the physical body. As humans, we often lean toward improving the body more than the mind. But it’s only when they’re in synch that we see change.

While improving the body can be hard, we know it’s trained by repeated action and we can often see the physical changes. But the mind is trickier. It feeds on illusion and likes distraction. It’s fickle and plays tricks on us. It enjoys being on autopilot. It’s dangerous because it replays our regrets of the past and gives us anxiety toward the future. It causes us to live in our heads more than in the present. But the mind is also our most powerful asset.

“Even when you’ve dealt all your cards, just remember you always have an ace up your sleeve— your mind.” I heard that in a documentary once and it stuck with me.

Last year I was introduced to the Wim Hof method— the breathing and the cold exposure which I wrote about. But I wanted to go deeper. How could I incorporate it into everyday life? Earlier this year I started working with two coaches for this purpose. Brian became my breathing and mind coach, and Chris created a training plan for me to implement practices for every day and in my athletic endeavors.

Power of the mind

You can train the breath just like you can train for running or lifting. But first, it takes awareness of both the body and the mind. How your posture is, where the mind drifts.

Suddenly you’re aware of the tense shoulders when your phone rings. Or how you go through your whole to-do list at a stoplight and anxiety creeps in. Or when you panic and hold your breath. But with the breath, you can control more of this. You can bring tranquility to the mind and body so that new challenges don’t become easier, but you get stronger. If your breath gets stronger, your mind and physical ability do too.

How do you train your breath?

At the start of the breathing training program, we used a machine to measure my lung capacity. Mine is about 6 liters (the average for a woman my age is 4L), yet I was only using 33% of it. We focused the rest of the breathing training to increase that percentage.

The first four weeks of breathing training were mostly awareness. It required careful observation of something that’s normally on autopilot. Observing where I draw my breath from and where I hold tension in my body.

Brian asked me to observe my breathing when I’d see my phone screen light up with a call. I learned when that phone lights up with a call or text I hold my breath. I learned when I am anxious I hold the tension in my shoulders. I noticed when I’m driving, my mind thinks about the client email I haven’t answered, the presentation I haven’t finished, my grocery list, and gawking at a passing gas station at how expensive gas is.

Chris asked me to notice my posture and breathing while working at my desk. To notice the rhythm of my breath when I rode hills on the bike. To count the number of steps per breath while running.

I’d come into the gym with them to practice hypoxic training— strategically lowering your oxygen levels to get your body to adapt to higher CO2 levels. We’d practice drills on a static bike, and breathe into a rubber bag to practice the depths of the breath.

On our first day of training, I couldn’t fill up a 3 Liter bag in one breath. It would flop around after my attempt. Two months later I was consistently filling the 3 Liter bag, with air to spare.

Brian even shared a technique to improve sleep. ¹ You tape your mouth at night so that you only breathe through the nose. This helps your body achieve a state of natural relaxation and breathing through your nose helps expand blood vessels for increased ability to transport oxygen throughout the body. In addition to getting you better sleep, it's another way to train your body to adapt and perform better athletically.

“Practice, practice, practice,” Brian said repeatedly. It’s all about technique. How you sit, how you work, how you sleep, and how you breathe when driving.

I was reminded of a phrase a mentor says, “where attention goes, energy flows.” The power of the mind helps improve our breathing, which improves our physical abilities.

When the mind and body are in synch, the quality of our internal and external life improves. You learn to use your breath to de-escalate emotions like anger. You use the breath as a tool to decrease anxiety and feel more present. You learn to use it as a technique to become a better athlete.

5 lessons I learned from Brian and Chris:

1. Most people aren’t living, they are thinking. Thinking isn’t living. What percent of the time are you living and what percent are you thinking about living? When you’re driving, are you in the moment or are you thinking about other things? LIVE more. Live in the moment. Yes, there are times for thoughts and thinking but train your brain not to waste energy on those. Train your brain to bring those in when you call for them, not when they call for you.

2. Be as present as you are when you’re 100 ft from the finish line of a race. You aren’t thinking about emails, a text you forgot to reply to, or a meeting with your boss. You are fully present. That is living. That’s what you need to feel every day. Focused on the task at hand. Whether it’s driving, talking on the phone, running, or baking cookies.

3. Pay attention to the words you speak and the narrative you tell yourself. When I told Brian this breathing stuff is “hard”, he said. It’s not hard, it’s challenging. You can face a challenge. You can try. You can improve. Even just switching “hard” with “challenging” will change your mindset.

4. Biking, running, and adventures take you to places of discomfort. Until they become comfortable, then you push a little farther into the growth zone. The same goes for life’s challenges and curveballs. “Technique technique technique. Practice practice practice,” Brian says. You have to relax into it. Let go of the tension. Only then will you be free to breathe. Free to live and experience fully.

5. Every frustrating or difficult moment is an opportunity to practice. Breathe to think, and think to breathe.

There’s so much more to explore about breathing. It’s the only thing keeping us alive yet something we hardly ever think about. It’s something that should be taught at a young age because it’s a tool we have in every situation, especially stressful ones and panic moments. It helps us savor every second that’s so precious in life. It can help us live more fully if we let it.

If you’re curious about diving into the depths of your breath, let me know in the comments. I’m happy to chat more about it. It’s hard to find the right resources online for such an in-depth topic with a lot of science behind it, which is why learning from Brian and Chris from Evolve was so helpful. If you’re an athlete, parent, kid, or just someone wanting to reduce stress, and anxiety, and be more present in life, learning to breathe is a tool everyone has access to. You just might need a little help to learn how to use it.

1. Anyone interested in mouth taping and other breathing techniques should speak with a trained professional first