Breath, often taken for granted, holds the key to unlocking numerous benefits, from enhancing sleep quality to grounding our emotions.

As we journey through ancient practices like Holotropic and Buteyko to modern techniques like Box Breathing, you'll discover how simple adjustments in the way you breathe can lead to monumental shifts in your life.

Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or a curious beginner, this episode promises to offer insights that can reshape your daily routines and overall health.

Your safety and those you care about are paramount. Don't wait until danger strikes; gear up with our 6-week Survival Fitness Plan Challenge now! https://www.survivalfitnessplan.com/challenge

This podcast is available from most major podcast hosts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:53:88 Breathwork Explained

01:26:60 Breathwork Benefits

02:50:33 How to Improve Your Sleep

03:17:71 Oldest Types of Breathwork

04:25:22 Holotropic Breathing

04:57:17 Transformational Breathing

05:42:25 Buteyko Method

06:51:21 Three Types to Focus On

06:58:78 C Clamp

07:52:28 Box Breathing

09:08:09 Holding Your Breath

10:08:60 Closing

Imagine possessing the skills and stamina to face any danger head-on. It starts here – are you up for the 6-week Survival Fitness Plan Challenge? https://www.survivalfitnessplan.com/challenge

Hi guys, Sam Fury here with another episode of the Survival Fitness Plan, the only program where you will train yourself to outrun, outfight, and outlive the majority of the world's population. Today we're going to talk about breath work, but before that let me just tell you that I'm really sore today and yesterday because a couple of days ago I did a new strength training routine which is currently, I tested it out because it's going to be built into the Survival Fitness Plan and I think I overdid it a bit, but never mind.

So look out for that, getting the updates if you've got the, if you've got the app, and if not, go get the app. And yeah, and also some new mobility routines and new meditations and a whole new, actually everything's, it's not super, it's not completely changed, but everything's been, being updated as we speak.

I'm super busy these days. And then last night we went out to eat some Greek food and I ate something and I ate way too much. So that's a bit heavy.

 Anyway, let's get on with today's episode. How breathwork can improve your life and how to do it. So what, what is breathwork? A lot of you might think of meditation and things like that, which is a type of breathwork.

If you're focusing on your breathing, it's basically any intentional breathing exercise. And I guess it's a type of meditation, but it's not like classic meditation, but it can be. So anyway. I'll get more into how to do it or how specifically we do it as well in this viral fitness plan and how it's built-in.

 And first, we'll go over some benefits. So what are the benefits of breath work or of breathing, conscious breathing, right? You're gonna reduce stress and anxiety Why because it kind of activates the parasympathetic nervous system, right? Which promotes relaxation and reduces feelings of stress and anxiety.

That's what that's what that does to the parasympathetic nervous system. Okay, You improve clarity and focus Because you increase any oxygen flow to the brain now I started doing this Like it's being built into the to meditations and I've definitely noticed that I've Got a little bit more energy and focus.

And I only do it for like, 5 minutes or something like that a day. Right? So, there you go. That's living proof.

Enhancing emotional regulation. Cause it's got mindfulness stuff in it, right? So you can increase your, self-awareness which can improve your emotional, your emotional responses. Increases physical relaxation.

So, well it depends, right? Certain types of breathwork can. Promote physical relaxation and reduce tension in the body things like that. Improves sleep. I think that just because it relaxes you, right, you do breathwork, it relaxes you, gives you a nice quiet mind. So if you want to do it before bed turn off your, like get off your screens, like there's a whole bunch of things that you can do to improve sleep.

One of the main ones is just not allowing in artificial light, like your screens and you like your white lights and all that. So turn off your screens and do some breathwork instead. And just enhancing overall, overall well-being, right? Because you get all those things, as your overall well-being, it just enhances that.

All right, let's go over some types. There are a lot of types. I'm not going to go over all of them, but I'll go over a few that are well-known.

 One of the oldest ones that lots of people, the oldest, most well known of the oldest ones is, Pranayama breathing, which is a bunch of different breathing yogic exercises, right?

A bunch of different yogic breathing exercises. There are a few different ones. Like, you can do alternate nostril breathing, right? Or deep belly breathing. Alternate nostril breathing is like, you breathe you plug up Anyway, this is how I used to learn. I don't know how accurate this is. But you plug one nose and breathe.

And then plug the other nose and breathe out. And so you breathe through the nose, so it's going in one nostril, out the other, and then it goes in the other nostril, then it went out, and back out the other. It's kind of like for those of you on the video, you'll be able to see.

Right, and that's it. And you do alternate nostril breathing. Or deep belly breathing, that's like you're breathing deep into your diaphragm, which is just deep breathing that normal people know. That most, not normal people, lots of people know. And that helps calm and, calm the mind, and kind of gives you energy, right?

 Then there's this one called holotropic breathwork, which is by this guy called Stanislav Grof. I don't know if that's how you pronounce his name. Anyway, that's basically rapid deep breathing for a long time. And it induces an altered state of consciousness. It's kind of like going into I forgot what the word is.

Like, like when you hyperventilate, right? And but it promotes, but you do it in a, in a safe. It promotes healing and self-discovery. So that's a different type.

 Another type is transformational breathwork, right? Which is conscious connected breathing with the intention of releasing emotional blockages and promoting physical and emotional health.

Health. And then the Wim Hof method is quite famous, alright? It's rapid breathing followed by breath holding or breath retention they call it, but breath holding with the goal of improving physical and mental well-being to increase. Tolerance to stress. So he specifically, not specifically, it's part of his whole Wim Hoth method.

The first step is this type of breathing. The second step is to take cold showers or take cold baths like ice cold, right? And then, and then you use the breathing to help you to help you overcome that stress.

The booty, the Buteyko method, which I've never heard of before, but it's quite interesting.

Slow shallow breathing with the goal of reducing overall breathing and improving respiratory function. So that's got a definite health benefit, right? Buteyko breathing, it's called, Buteyko method the Sureshan Kriya, a series of specific breathing patterns with the goal of reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.

LAll right. So there's a few, there's lots more. Each and each type has its own unique benefits. Right. And it comes down to how we use it in the survival fitness plan. Well, Breathwork is automatically integrated with daily meditation, especially with the new ones. Anyway, it's kind of that, that'll be pushed forward.

Some of them were already pushed into what we just haven't pushed it live yet, but you, you'll expect in the next couple of weeks that it'll be 2. 0 will come out like the program, the first month of the program, 2. 0 will come out and we'll have all these changes, right? And one of them will be that breath work is integrated into daily meditation.

We're going to go into daily meditation deeper on another episode. I know I've done it before, but we'll go into deeper like the new type in another episode.

All right, so there are three types we focus on. C clamp breathing, which I learned about from Dave Asprey's new book, right?

So basically you're, it's where you're breathing from both sides of your torso.

So usually when people do deep breathing, they're breathing deep and they're like, breathe into your diaphragm, right, and their stomach pops out. What you want to do is try to concentrate on making it so you breathe, so both sides come out, right, at the same time, so you're breathing more evenly. And the way to do this, like to practice, to ingrain it into you is what they call C, you make a C clamp with your hand, right, make a shape of a C, and then put it, so, on your, on your waist, so that Your fingers are facing your back.

Right. And then breathe in and then feel your torso with the intention of feeling your torso fill up evenly back and front, right? Yeah. So that's what, and that's deep breathing as well. So we use the C clamp method.

 Alright? And then we also got. Box breathing. So, box breathing is where you breathe in for five seconds, and this is a Navy SEALS technique to help them cope with higher-stress situations, box breathing has been around for a long time, we've been I've been advocating it for years, and years and years but anyway, it's built into the, into the soil fitness plan.

So, box breathing, you breathe in for five seconds, you hold your breath for five seconds, you breathe out for a count of five seconds, and you hold your breath for five seconds, and then you just repeat it, right? And you can... You can do a longer count if you want, you can work all your way up to like 30 seconds if you can, but just remember, however long you breathe in for, that's how long you've got to hold your breath for, which is not so much of a problem, but however long you hold your breath for is how long you've got to exhale for, which isn't so much of a problem, but then you've got to hold your breath, your breath, at the end of the exhale, and that that can be pretty difficult if it's, if it's a long time, so just work your way up slowly.

And then, something that we do specifically in the survival fitness plan Is breath-hold training, right? Because we wanna, we wanna be able to, One of our goals is to be able to swim underwater for 50 meters. And a big part of that, Like some, one part of it is technique, Obviously is your technique for swimming.

 And the other part is being able to hold your breath. So we practice on dry land, And we practice every other day, like every second day to increase that capacity. And basically what you do is you, Take a deep breath in, And then you breathe out a hundred percent, like get everything out. So you want to get all that carbon dioxide out and then you breathe in again until about 80 percent and then of your capacity.

And then you hold right. And you just hold for as long as you can. And then every time you do it, you want to try to get a little bit better, but of course, you don't want to pass out or anything. So just be safe about it and then hold it as long as you can. And then breathe out. 100 percent when you have to as when you first need to breathe out, you just swallow a little spit and that'll help you keep it a little bit longer and then breathe out in a little puff.

So don't breathe out fully. And then, and then when you really need to, you breathe out a hundred percent. Now you don't really have to worry, like even let's say you hold your breath so much and then you pass out, which is not good. Don't go for that. But if let's say that happens, because you're on dry land, your body will just kick in and you'll start breathing normally.

That's just the way the body works. So obviously you don't want to overdo it, especially in water. So that's why we train on dry land first.

 Right. That is it. So we've got those three types and of course, there's more to meditation but they're just the breathwork ones that we use in the meditations.

Yeah, and so you can look forward to seeing that update in the app. And if you don't have the app yet, go get it because the Swole Foot's plan is much more than a fitness program, right? We do a lot of habit training and longevity, you're going to learn to outrun, outfight, and outlive the majority of the world's population.

So there you go, download the app today and level up your life. It's www.survivalfitnessplan.com/app. Thanks. See you again. See you tomorrow. Bye.