How to breathe yourself better

Are you breathing properly?

 

A while ago, I remember being really taken back when someone who I’d pretty much just met, told me that I wasn’t breathing properly. Aside from the strangeness of the comment, I was surprised for 2 reasons

1. How could they possibly tell – we’d only just met?!
2. I didn’t realise that breathing could be done BADLY… as far as I was concerned I was a successful breather.. I was alive and taking in oxygen… was there something else I should be doing too?

Since then I have learned a lot more about breathing, but only really in passing, so when I was introduced to Michael Townsend Williams and our conversation veered into the importance of breathing, I knew that I had to find out more, and that here was a guy who could help me to do that.

Michael is a yogi, coach and entrepreneur. He went from being obsessed with ‘Doing’ in his advertising career to his focus on just ‘Being’ as a yoga and meditation teacher, he now works with the magic of combining and integrating these two fundamental aspects of ourselves – Being & Doing. He also teaches yoga and mindfulness to individuals, groups and organisations as StillWorks where you will also find his popular blog ‘DoBeDoBe’ and his ‘Mindfulness Made Easy’ 6 week course. And, he’s recently launched a breathing app. Breathe Sync™ is his new biofeedback breathing app for iPhone which reduces stress and improves focus by synchronising your breathing with your heart through pulse analysis.

So you see – he is brilliantly placed to help me to get to grips with breathing, and how to do it better.

During today’s podcast, Michael shares

• what good breathing practice is
• why taking time to breathe correctly can help to reduce your stress levels
• the difference between what happens in our body on our intake versus our out-take of breath
• what our heart rate variability (HRV) is and why it’s useful and used in sports performance
• why our breath is crucial in being able to affect positive change in the body
• what the BreatheSync app is and how it can help to improve your health

Since recording this interview, I’ve become a huge fan of the app and now use it regularly. Not only does it help me to stick to my meditation practice, but I also use it to measure the impact of my head trash clearance sessions…. I love nothing than to see a metric measurement to see if something I’m doing is working…. if you’re intrigued as to what I mean, then all will become clear if you listen to the podcast.

Enjoy!

[powerpress]
If you want to find out more about Michael, you can find him here….

Follow Michael Townsend Williams on Twitter @mtownsendw

Breathe Sync™ (biofeedback breathing app for iPhone)
You can buy it on the App Store for $9.99 or £6.99

StillWorks (Yoga & Mindfulness)
Welldoing (Coaching)
Inside Out (self-development for young children) – theinsideout.org.uk