The Invisible Habit That Turns Healthy People Unhealthy

Indulge me for a moment.

For the next few seconds, try and become aware of your breath, as if it was the very first time that you were experiencing it.

What do you know about this breath? Where does it come from? And what needs to happen to make it possible?

Now, become aware of its quality — is it moving fast or slow, for example? Or deep or shallow? Hard or soft? With ease or with tension?

Where in your body is your breath breathing you — in your belly, chest, or throat?

Now, place a forefinger on your top lip — notice what point the breath is warmer and at what point it is cooler. Why?

What has transformed inside of your body to make such alchemy happen?

Well, if you’re still curious.. let’s take a look, shall we?

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The breath’s rare universal quality is that it serves all beings without the need for attention or recognition. It simply breaths through all of us without a moment’s hesitation or doubt, and without carrying any expectation, prejudice, judgement, or dogma. It transcends every culture, tradition, gender, and race too, and it has done since the beginning of time. It quietly goes about its business in every country and through every living creature in every living moment simultaneously. It is perhaps our greatest and most consistent reminder to life’s deepest truth: We Are All One.

“We are all one breath-breathing, human being” — Rumi

Where in the body we breathe

The area of the body we breathe into most has a tremendous relationship on how the heart, mind, nervous system, and vital organs communicate. And how they communicate affects everything.

This communication then influences everything else that we do, from the thoughts that we think to the emotions that we feel, to the actions that we take.

These thoughts, emotions, and actions then define who we are and who we become.

High levels of anxiety, for example, live in the final 10% of the breath, right there in the throat area. A peaceful mind, on the other hand, invites softer breaths into the belly.

As the breath never lies, it doesn’t matter whether we’re feeling stressed, anxious, scared, aroused, excited, joyful, jealous, bored, peaceful, compassionate, disgusted, grateful, angry, happy, sad, up, down, or anything in between, it will reflect what’s going on every single time.

Trying to change these emotions as they’re happening can be a challenging task. But changing where the breath is breathed in the body is much more manageable.

The breath in the body can be broken down into 3 zones: the belly, lungs/chest, and throat.

So, if a full breath (100%) was to be divided up, it might look something like this:

• 30% into the belly.
• 60% into the lungs/chest.
• 10% into the throat.

Depending on how deeply you breathe, what physical shape you’re in, what you eat, how much stress you experience, how mentally and emotionally stable you are, how often you exercise, and whether you breathe in through your nose or your mouth will determine which part of your body you breathe into most.

Science has long proven that high levels of stress correspond to serious health conditions if sustained over long periods of time. And where we breathe in the body has a big part to play in this. It’s no surprise then that at a time when the world is moving faster and where there is so much stimulation for our nervous systems to keep up with, more and more people are suffering from physical and mental health problems.

Trying to understand the root cause of these conditions through the mind can create more questions than answers. However, the body and the breath never lie. Together, they hold up an honest reflection to what the mind is thinking and how the body is feeling. So, as the breath is the first thing to change in any given situation, it can reveal a truth that’s otherwise hard to grasp.

That connection to truth can be achieved by creating healthy breathing habits such as breathing through the nose, breathing slow, calm breaths into the belly, taking fewer breaths per minute, and engaging the diaphragm.

By connecting to the area of the body that you breathe into most, you can begin to adopt new breathing habits like these that support and enhance health and longevity. Your body will then take care of itself naturally.

“No matter what we eat, how much we exercise, how resilient our genes are, how skinny or young or wise we are — none of it will matter unless we’re breathing correctly” — James Nestor

Where we breathe and how often we breathe are so intrinsically linked that it’s hard to look at one without the other. So, let’s now look at how often we breathe to build upon the foundations we have already created.

How often we breathe

Take a moment to review the table below. As you do, give attention to the four examples and to how the number of breaths we breathe per minute affects the overall health of our body and what we can do about it if anything needs to change.

20 breaths per minute

Effect: High, consistent stress levels in all areas of life.

Location of breath: Upper chest/throat

Nose or mouth breathing: Typically mouth breathing (may partially alternate)

Possible side effects: Anxiety, depression, poor sleep, poor digestion, inflammation, hypertension, chronic pain, and fatigue.

Skin conditions such as eczema and a susceptibility towards addictive habits such as drug use, excessive coffee, binge eating, gaming, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, pornography, sex, etc…

15 breaths per minute (the average person’s breath count)

Effect: Medium levels of stress consistently throughout each day.

Location of breath: Chest/throat

Nose or mouth breathing: Both (may alternate)

Possible side effects: Anxious or overly confident, busy, active mind or brain fog; a susceptibility towards addictions such as excessive coffee, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, social media, etc…

10 breaths per minute

Effect: Calm, collective, peaceful, and balanced with a stronger resistance to emotional and mental stressors. Less emotionally reactive.

Location of breath: Belly/chest

Nose or mouth mouthing: Nose

Possible side effects: N/A

5 breaths per minute

Effect: Calm, consistent mind, optimal awareness. Presence of being.

Location of breath: Belly/chest

Nose or mouth breathing: Nose

Possible side effects: N/A

This table is based on day-to-day routine life. Exercising, eating, talking, lovemaking, and other daily activities will naturally fluctuate the number of breaths we breathe per minute but, on average, it’s how many breaths we are breathing most consistently throughout the day which is what’s important to take note of here.

Now, as much as this table demonstrates how we can breathe stress into the body it also shows us how to breathe it out.

Below is one example of how to do just that:

• 1 minute = 60 seconds
• 60 seconds divided by 10 (breaths) = 6
• 6 breaths divided by 2 (inhale & exhale) = 3
• Inhale — 3 seconds
• Exhale — 3 seconds

That’s very doable!

And that’s not even taking into account the natural pauses that can come at the top of the inhale and/or at the bottom of the exhale. So, it might well look more like this:

• Inhale — 1 second
• Pause — 1 second
• Exhale — 2 seconds
• Pause — 2 seconds

Or

• Inhale — 1 second
• Pause — 1 second
• Exhale — 3 seconds
• Pause — 1 second

Or any alternative in between!

As stress is on the rise, learning how to take fewer breaths per minute could be a saving grace in a world that’s only getting faster. Many healthy people forget this secret and they’re living with the consequences because of it.

Breathing habits

Recently, lifestyle choices such as diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management have received far more attention so the breath has often been forgotten or even ignored. However, what we eat and drink, how often we exercise, how much stress we’re under, and even how much we sleep we get to a large degree are less important than how the way we breathe because they’re less immediate.

If you were to stop breathing for just a few precious seconds, for example, you’d very quickly learn of the need to breathe. The same can’t be said for food, drink, exercise or sleep, at least not within the same timeframe. So, the breath could well be the most important daily habit of all.

The good news is that whenever we’re talking about breathing habits, there are only four areas that we’re concerned with:

1. Nose breathing vs mouth breathing
2. The area of the body we breathe into most –belly, chest, or throat
3. How many breaths we breathe per minute
4. Engaging diaphragm

So, here is the golden formula for healthy breathing:

Nose breathing + slow, calm breaths into the belly + engaged diaphragm = healthy breathing habits

“Yes, breathing in different patterns really can influence our body weight and overall health. Yes, how we breathe really does affect the size and function of our lungs. Yes, breathing allows us to hack into our own nervous system, control our immune response, and restore our health. Yes, changing how we breathe will help us live longer” — James Nestor

Closing thoughts

The breath is the first thing that we do when we’re born and it’s the last thing that we do before we die. One breath in, one breath out. That’s all we get.

Our whole life exists between these two points.

We don’t have to think about it how to do it, plan for it, organise it, prepare it, find it, buy it, grow it, convince it, persuade it, source it, or use any special equipment to do it. We don’t have to belong to any particular gender, race, nationality, culture, religion, lineage, caste, wealth bracket, political group, or sports team.

And we don’t have to be in in any particular posture, hold a specific mudra, chant a mantra 108 times, have mercury in retrograde, be passing through a Saturn return, or have any planets in the 5th house because it transcends all that.

It’s certainly not limited to human emotions, judgements, and prejudices either. Instead, it quietly breathes through us all equally without a moment’s hesitation.

The breath is the most inclusive, non-judgemental, free, and non-dogmatic tool that we all have available to us everywhere always.

But although the breath is reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and ever-willing, it also needs love, support, and guidance to keep it that way. Our health and well-being literally depend upon it.

Now, the good thing is that we breathe between 15,000–20,000 breaths every day so that’s 15,000–20,000 opportunities to either breathe health in or breathe it out.

Which one we choose ultimately determines our destiny.

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If you've been inspired by the breath, discover my favourite breathwork here