Can we improve our lives just by playing around with the breath?

I specifically used the word "playing". Because that is exactly what I did for years during my lunch breaks. I would lock myself in my garage, switch off my phone, and do the breathing. But only 2 years into my practise did I realise that I was playing a breathing game and I am certain, that "playing" was one of the reasons that I didn't quit and kept going.

Of course, the main reason I started to do conscious breathing, was stress and sickness. Back in 2012 I was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of rheumatoid arthritis at the Chelsea Westminster Hospital. By that time, for about 10 years, I was struggling with pain in my back, my leg and my shoulder. Sometimes, I wasn't able to walk.

On one hand, when I received the diagnosis, it was a relief in a way, finally I knew what was causing the pain. Prior to the diagnosis, I visited numerous therapists, healers, doctors, massage, acupuncture, all of them. I tried all of them believe me.

On the other hand, it was scary, because my version of the arthritis, according to mainstream medicine - was uncurable. My doctor told me that I had to change my eating habits, lose weight and start doing more sport. So, I did. I was also prescribed medicine, strong anti-inflammatory drugs, which did help ease the symptoms, but after 4 years, almost ruined my bladder and stomach.

That is the main problem with most drugs, they only deal with symptoms and not the root cause. I had to stop the drugs, because they created other symptoms which were as bad if not worse than the sickness which they were meant to treat. After I stopped the drugs, I noticed, that I had short periods of time, where I was not in pain. I thought to myself, how can this be? Perhaps it was related to my circumstances in day to day life? Perhaps the arthritis had something to do with the way I was thinking? or rather how much I was thinking? Or breathing? Breathing and thinking are co-related, stay with me.

Let us dive a bit deeper into breathing habits. We are our parents, we are our mothers, grandmothers, our fathers, grand fathers and so on. We inherit everything from them and everything from other people who are close to us especially early on during childhood and teenage years. In my case, I have inherited my mothers' breathing habit. I was constantly mouth breathing due to stress in my family early in my childhood. Excessive mouth breathing causes crocked teeth (which I had before correcting them with braces a few years ago), it causes all sorts of problems, stuffed and running nose, bronchitis, allergy, sleep apnoea, bad breath, cardio-vascular issues and the main thing which it causes is - stress! Yesss. A bad breathing habit causes your sympathetic nervous system to be full on at all times. I have had all the above symptoms.

You have probably heard many times since it has become a mainstream topic nowadays - your life starts with an inhale and ends with an exhale, the only thing which keeps you alive, is breathing. Not food, not water - your breathing. We can consider this a fact and I was a witness to the birth of my daughter; her life did start with an inhale for sure. Facts are easy to work with, we know that the whole life is based on the breath, it is clearer than spring water to me, that if you start to play with your breathing, if you start to re-adjust it, you affect the course of your life.

Let’s talk about stress again. What is it? What is stress? After close to 5000 hours of conscious breathing I know exactly what it is.

Let me ask you this first, do you think, that outside factors are causing your stress? The commute, the traffic, the boss, the wife, the kids, the weather, the politicians, the money? Most of us tend to blame our circumstances and these external factors for our stress, and I was also one of them. But I can assure that, they make up only about 20%. The 80 % of the stress is happening between inhales and exhales.

Remember the "Life starts with an INHALE and ends with an EXHALE?", to me this is another simple fact, our lives are happening between the inhales and the exhales, you need to see this as a whole picture, the WHOLE course of our lives.

In between each inhale and exhale (there are about 650.000.000 of them during an average human life) is a feeling which generates thought patterns, or rather your internal dialogue, yes yes the one that is talking constantly inside of your mind and judging, blaming, calculating, measuring, assuming, worrying, fearing, screaming, crying etc! That my dear reader is the one which creates the stress. It has been scientifically proven, that on average, we humans THINK about 6500 thoughts per day! Think about that lol. 6500 thoughts! And you know what the scariest part of it all is? We rethink the same thoughts over and over again each day, each month, each year and we are not aware of them. Do you realise how much energy that consumes? You brain is the biggest energy consumer in your body! Those thoughts create the same emotions throughout the course of our lives.

What if we could cut down in the amount of thoughs to say about half of the 6500? Would you agree that you would have less stress? What if we learned how to breathe correctly in our day to day life, so that we maintain an optimal balance of C02 and OXYGEN, optimal balance of our nervous system, would that reflect on external environment? Would that reflect on our performance at work and at home? Would that affect our physical and mental wellbeing? Would correct breathing habits cause less season illnesses and virus infections?

Meditating is not enough! Today, especially during these hard times, the pandemic, it is VITAL, literally vital for ALL people on the planet, to learn how to breathe correctly, to learn how to do breathing techniques in order to stay safe and healthy. According to NHS, breathwork is necessary for precation and post covid recovery, but I would say that if people knew how to breathe, we would see a totally different picture in terms of the amount of people getting infected. I am speaking from my own experience, since I learned how to breathe, I haven't been sick. It is very simple, if you breathe through the nose most of the time, the Nitric Oxide burns all of viruses and bacteria. Our natural protector. However, in real world life, it is pretty hard to be in your nose all of the time, it requires you to constantly pay attention to your breathing, and who does that apart from freaks like me? I am often asked by people what I do, and I say that I am breathing master, I teach people how to breathe, and how to enter deep states of relaxation, and I usually get a "Whaaat? What do you mean breathe? I am breathing, I know how to breathe since birth". That is totally true, we all breathe automatically, but the creator has given us the only control that we actually have, we can control our breath, that is it, we can't control anything else, hard to believe, but once you start playing around and go deep, you come to this realisation. So why not use this great ability to control the breath? Can we affect our lives and our health by playing around with our breath?

Today, with full certainty I can tell you that we can! I am off all pills since end of 2015 and in the best version of myself thanks to conscious breathing. Am I cured? Not 100%, I have to maintain my well-being through daily practice, and thanks to the arthritis which guided me to become a master of conscious breathing, I am able to transmit and teach the power of the breath to other people, who might not have such a serious condition as me, but who might be going through stress at work and at home or just want to maintain a high level of health and control of the course of their lives through simple breathing habits which I teach. No need to find quiet spaces to practise or become a freak, the breathing happens all the time, you can be in your breathing throughout the day.

If the experience of life, is between our inhales and exhales of each and single individual on this planet, could we affect the course of humanity? Yeah, I totally believe that, and it has become my mission for people to experience just a tiny bit of change in their body and their lives with my breathing experience.

Yes, I am promoting my breathing experience for business with this article, but the first and main goal was to inspire the reader to just think about the possibilities which are literally right in front our noses. I have developed a unique experience, where the employees get together via the internet and breathe in unison, no talking, no thinking, just pure experience. You can download my brochure here.

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With love - Feodor Kouznetsov certified Buteyko method instructor and founder of formula.life breathing method.

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