The Breath Blueprint Part 2: Seven Philosophies From Ancient Yogis to Navy SEALs | EP5

EPISODE DESCRIPTION: 

How do ancient yogis, Russian special forces, and Navy SEALs all arrive at the same breathing principles? In Part 2 of The Breath Blueprint, Sheldon explores seven breathwork philosophies—from 5,000-year-old pranayama to modern tactical breathing—and reveals the common thread that makes them all work: the vagus nerve.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Seven philosophies, one underlying mechanism: vagal tone
• Pranayama techniques: Nadi Shodana, Kapalabati, Ujjayi, Sama Vritti
• Horizontal breathing recruits the diaphragm; vertical breathing is dysfunctional
• The physiological sigh is the fastest way to down-regulate in real time
• Systema's 4 pillars: breath, movement, posture, relaxation
• Box breathing works because it hits the 5-6 breaths/min sweet spot
• Breath is Pattern #1 in the Prim8 Framework—master it first

CHAPTERS:

• 00:00 Introduction & Part 1 Recap
• 1:07 Pranayama: 5,000 Years of Breath Science
• 2:05 Four Essential Pranayama Techniques
• 7:19 Dr. Belisa Vranich: Horizontal Breathing & BIQ Score
• 10:18 Patrick McKeown: Oxygen Advantage & BOLT
• 15:47 James Nestor: The Perfect Breath (5.5-5.5)
• 18:18 Dan Brulé: Three Convergences & Dynamic Peace
• 23:38 Russian Systema: Four Pillars & Five Principles
• 33:15 Tactical Breathing: Box Breathing & Physiological Sigh
• 35:55 Therapeutic Breathwork: Holotropic & Rebirthing
• 38:00 MBT Integration & Prim8 Framework
• 44:48 Five Practical Takeaways
• 47:56 Recap & Call to Action

RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

1. Breathing for Warriors — Dr. Belisa Vranich
2. The Oxygen Advantage — Patrick McKeown
3. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art — James Nestor
4. Just Breathe — Dan Brulé
5. Systema: The Russian Martial System — Giuseppe Filotto

LINKS:

• CHECK OUT THE FREE MBT COMMUNITY 👇🏼www.skool.com/movementbasedtherapy
• www.instagram.com/@sheldon.mbt
• www.youtube.com/movementbasedtherapy

Transcript

What's going on? Everyone, welcome back to another episode of the MBT Movement. I'm your host, Sheldon, and on today's episode, really excited to bring this one to you.We are diving right back into breath with part two of the Breath Blueprint. So last week we dug into the science stating 91% of athletes are breathing wrong. Also how we lose our natural breathing pattern by the age of 5 that is pretty mind blowing, and why your diaphragm is the pneumatic hub of your entire body.Some solid research brought to you by Doctor Bellisa Ranich. So if you missed part 1, definitely go back and listen. It's gonna set the foundation for everything we covered.So today we're getting into the solutions. I'm gonna break down the world's most powerful breathing philosophies from ancient practices that are dated over 5,000 years old to modern tactical breathing used by Navy Seals and Special Forces, all the way down to therapeutic modalities that can unlock deep emotional healing.And then I'll show you exactly how I integrate all of this into the MBT approach. So let's get into it. So let's start where it all begin. Everything we're gonna talk about today, Vranwich, McCown, Nestor, the Navy Seals, these are all modern interpretations of breath work.But the original breath masters, they were practicing over 5,000 years ago in ancient India with a practice known as pranayama. Now the word itself comes from Sanskrit, where prana means life force or vital energy, and ayama meaning to extend or control.So literally the definition of Panayama means the extension and control of life force through breath.Panayama was first documented in Yoga Sutras of patangali, which was around 400 b C E and practices even date back to Vedic text where earlier oral traditions were have dated to be around 15 to 12 B C E in modern day, pranayama is known as the fourth limb of an eight limb yoga path, where ancient yogis understood this as controlling the breath to control the mind, control the body.Modern science is able to validate a lot more than back in the day, day things like heart rate variability improvements, parasympathetic nervous system activation, reduce cortisol and stress hormones through things like blood work and these sort of physiological biomarkers.But this took 5,000 years of practice and now it's backed by peer reviewed research.There are dozens of proneyama techniques, but let me hit the essential ones, the main ones that show up in modern methods. These are techniques that contemporary teachers have built upon since now I'm gonna go over four of the modern techniques that you might be familiar with.The first one is known as Nadi Shodana. This is alternate nostril breathing.The second is known as kapalabati, which is a skull shining breath.The third is known as an Ujayee breath, which is the ocean breath. And the last is sama vriti, which is the equal breathing technique.The first technique, nadi shodana alternate nostril breathing. It literally is that, so you're gonna breathe in through your nose and out through your nose. You wanna alternate the inhales and exhales with the nostril. So when you inhale, you're gonna block off the right nostril.You're gonna take a breath in, so you're breathing in through your left nostril, then you're gonna switch nostrils, and then you're gonna be exhaling through your right nostril, and then you're gonna inhale [...0.5s] holding that same nostril.So you're gonna be inhaling through your right nostril and then you're gonna exhale switching nostrils, then you're gonna exhale and exhale through left. So if you're watching the video version, this is exclusive to the school community.So if you're not already on the school community, go ahead and check it out. But you'll see the video version. I'm gonna demonstrate this real quick. So I'm gonna take a big breath in. I'm holding my right nose plugged. I'm gonna breathe in through my left. [...1.8s]I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna switch nostrils. Now I'm plugging my left nostril and I'm exhaling through my right. And then I'm gonna inhale through my right, [...2.2s] switch nostrils, exhale through my left. So that's gonna be the alternate nostril breathing, otherwise known as Nadi shodana.The benefits here are that you're getting access to both the left and right hemisphere of the brain. Not just that it's calming, it's centering. And there's actually some solid research talking about the differences between the right and left nostrils.So when you breathe in through the right nostril, it's been linked to have more sympathetic nervous system activation.So that is your fight flight freeze and your left nostril is more down regulation. This is linked to your parasympathetic nervous system that is your rest, digest relaxation phase of your nervous system. So [...0.5s] pretty good science, pretty interesting benefits behind this technique alone.Moving on to the next technique. This is known as kapa labati. This is a skull shining breathing. So you're gonna have rapid, forceful exhales through the nose [...0.5s] with passive inhales.So if you ever been in a yoga class, this is known as breath of fire. So you're taking a breath in passively. You're basically allowing the diaphragm to recoil and then you're forcing the exhale out. So when you force exhale out, you're gonna have a vacuum. You're gonna have a recoil of the diaphragm to pull air back in. That is gonna be your inhale. And you just continue to force those exhales out.So as much as it sounds like all you're doing is exhaling the inhales very, like and passive, you are still getting air in.It is a very rhythmic style tempo. So it's very fast, so very forceful exhales and the recoil of the diaphragm again coming in for the inhale, [...0.5s] moving into ujay breath. This is a slight construction of the back of the throat creating an ocean wave sort of sound.This is very common in ashtonga and vinyasa yoga practices. So as you inhale, you're gonna inhale through the nose [...1.1s] and then you're gonna sort of like use your, use the back of your tongue and close off the glutton of your throat to the back of your throat and just really let the exhale come out. So I'm gonna inhale, [...1.0s] then I'm gonna restrict my throat. [...4.0s] So is very much in that sort of way where you're controlling the exhale.Sort of like I talked about in episode one how humming is sort of a technique that can be beneficial to one building carbon dioxide tolerance to increasing vagal tone.Because the restriction of your throat along with the vibration of your vocal cords helps to stimulate parasympathetic activation through vagus nerve stimulation of the vibration of the vocal cords.In addition to that, this Ujay breath is very much a way for you to control the exhale, control the temple at which you expel air, which again is gonna help to build [...0.5s] CO2 tolerance.Last we have samavriti. This is equal breathing. Many people know this most commonly as box style breathing. So you have four corners to the box. One corner is gonna be one number. You're gonna have a pause.You're gonna have an exhale and then you're gonna have a pause. And that's the carve of the box. You can do it box style method or you can do it with just a normal inhale and exhale.The main important thing here is to make sure that you're doing [...0.4s] equal breathing throughout the whole technique. So it's not like a four second inhale, eight second exhale. That would be a different style of breathing technique. This is mainly for equalizing the breath.This is very similar to James Nestor's Perfect Breath where he has a five second box style technique.So it's five second inhale, five pause, five exhale, five pause. The main thing here is you wanna make sure that you have breath symmetry in each direction that should be equivalent to the inhale or the exhale, which again, those are both gonna be symmetrical.Now we're gonna move into our next philosophy here covering Doctor Balisa Vranichi's book. She literally covered the work and wrote a book on breathing for performance titled breathing for Warriors.Her breathing for warriors approach is built on seven principles from Vladimir Vasiliev's Russian Systema. But her core message is this horizontal breathing is ideal, not vertical breathing.Your diaphrag should be driving the bus, not your shoulders and neck. But within Doctor Radish's book, she covers three main concepts that are of ideal breathing techniques.First is known as the location of movement. Very straightforward. Where are you breathing and what is the first thing that's moving when you inhale, when you take that breath in? Is it your belly or is it your chest and shoulders?This is gonna dictate that location of movement and that's all we're paying attention to.The second principle here is known as range of motion. Range of motion is something we're very familiar in the orthopedic world when we talk about joints, but regarding breath, range of motion is gonna dictate how much air you can take in on the inhale.And the last concept here is known as the BIC score or the breathing IQ score. And this is her proprietary assessment tool which dictates breathing efficiency within any targeted breathing model. There's gonna be three main concepts here.The first is gonna be before exertion, the second is gonna be during, and the last piece is gonna be after post or recovery [...0.4s] before exertion.Really the whole idea here is you wanna prepare the system to be oxygenated. In addition to that, you're also getting the nervous system prepped for the work ahead.Very much like if you hit a workout, you wanna have a dynamic warm up that way the body and the nervous system are both synced up so that you're able to optimize the work within that session.Next is gonna be during the effort, the idea here is you want the systems to be working in unison, the coordinated breath with movement in something like a squat or something like a reach.Whenever there's a lengthening phase or the, or the lever arm is increasing, you wanna take the breath in. Reason being is you need more stability. And what better way to create stability than through the breath. The breath is gonna utilize a diaphragm to create trunk and circumferential stability.In addition to that, you can coordinate and better connect kinetic chains being the upper body and the lower body.So this is the idea here is you really wanna focus integrating the breath with the movement, which is the whole point of prepping the nervous system, which is what we do before exertion so that everything synced up and then during work, everything's paired up and coordinated moving into recovery.This is sort of post work, post session. The whole idea here now is to down regulate, down regulate the nervous system. Maybe we're a little ramped up, we're sympathetic, we're active, ready to go like Russell Crowe, but now we wanna focus on down regulating the nervous system.In addition to that, we wanna focus on lymphatics and being able to clear metabolic waste. If waste is staying in the space, we're stifling recovery. This is essentially like a traffic jam when we induce voluntary trauma through something like a very rigorous workout.We create muscle tearing and we need tissue to recover, and we need to optimize and facilitate recovery. Now moving to the next philosophy. Here we're gonna go over Patrick Mcgowan's work through with the Oxygen Advantage.Patrick Mcgowan takes a more clinical and measurable approach, which is something that I appreciate. He has very fascinating background because he used to work in the corporate world, but his life entirely changed when he met Doctor Constantine Pateco.And if you don't, and if you don't already know Doctor Pateco, he was a brilliant Russian physician who conducted groundbreaking research to determine the optimal breathing for astronauts during the Soviet space race.And Patrick was able to shadow during this whole time to pick up the methodologies and the strategies, really understanding the research behind the physiology of the breath.So I'm a huge fan of what Patrick is doing here. But he incorporates what's known as a bolt score, which is known as the body oxygen level test. This is something we talked about in part one, and that is his proprietary creation.So I definitely wanna give him credit there within the oxygen advantage. He focuses on three things, nasal breathing at all times, including during exercise, increasing carbon dioxide tolerance, and stimulating altitude through breath holds.I've talked about this as well within various bodies of research conducted by the Carolinstat Institute found that you can have increased oxygenation of up to 18% just by breathing through the nose.You'll have increased nitric oxide uptake upwards of 15 to 20 times if you just breathe through the nose. Benefits of nitric oxide include increase circulation via vaso dilation. Through that, you have decreased blood pressure.And not just that. Nitric oxide is an antimicrobio, so you can have immune system benefits simply by just breathing through your nose.When I first got in the supplements, I thought nitric oxide was this magic pill. Like, oh my god, there's this new thing out.Nitric oxide. It's in supplements. It helps get you more circulation. It helps give you more energy low and behold. We have that naturally within our own physiology. We just have to know how to access it.And something like nasal breathing is a huge benefit to this naturally ingrained molecule, the second being carbon dioxide tolerance.So the key here is breath hold and reduced breathing. This is something I was able to play around on a hike earlier today. But the idea here is you wanna be in control of your breath. Breathing in through nose, breathing out through a nice relaxed exhale, whether it's through pressed lips or whether it's through your nose.And at the very end of the exhale, you don't wanna, [...0.5s] you don't wanna gasp for air, nor do you wanna mouth breathe. You wanna really control the breath in through the nose, out through the mouth, really controlling, relaxing.And if you can even have a breath hold at the end of the exhale, that's where you really start to build the carbon dioxide tolerance.Something I was able to experience anecdotally was I, I realized during the hike during the ascent is that I was getting fatigued, obviously is gonna be more fatiguing than going down. But as I was getting fatigued, I was focusing on nasal breathing.I was focused on staying in control of my breath. And if there was ever a point where I got overexerted and fatigued to a point where my breath started to get rapidly more increased, I would just simply take a break. Now this made the hike a lot longer than it needed to be.But this methodology alone, I've noticed that after about five or six times of stopping that I was able to go longer.The physiology coming into play here is the increase in nitric oxide created a basal dilatory effect where my vessels were able to open up more. I was able to have increased circulation, increase tissue perfusion and just more enhanced benefits in terms of recovery and physiology.So I encourage next time you're exercising or trying something a little bit more physically exerting, definitely play around with this.Utilize the nasal breathing during the exercise and let the breath dictate how much you can load. If your breath starts getting out of control, you're doing way too much and you need to take a breather, literally [...0.4s] get back and control the breath.And once the breath comes back into play, you continue training at whatever load you were left off at.I would be interested to see if you hit that two minute threshold where two minutes is typically the standard to optimize [...0.4s] fossil creatine or PCR stores, which is exactly why during a training regiment you might see, um, the ones who are implementing rest periods anywhere between a minute, minute and a half upwards of two minutes for maximal recovery.But based off of that, the last piece here that Patrick Mcgone goes into within his three pillars is altitude simulation. And this is essentially intermittent hypoxic or hypercapnic training in essence.What you're doing here is you're doing a breath hold while you're training. So something like a sprint, you're gonna be holding your breath during the duration of the sprint and then maintaining control of the breath even post sprint.This is gonna be a very similar carry over effects such as if you were doing altitude training where we already know at altitude the air is gonna be a lot thinner because there's decreased pressure.Real quick going back in the Doctor Constantine Bateco's method again, he was a Soviet physician during the 1950s Soviet space race era. And he's been able to link chronic hyperventilation to asthma, anxiety, and sleep disorder.And if you think about anxiety, a big one here, panic attacks, anxiety. What's happening here? Hyperventilation. So there's gonna be rapid shallow breathing. And this simply means that we're not retaining carbon dioxide because we're constantly holding on to the oxygen.Again, the whole concept here is as you exhale and you build carbon dioxide tolerance, when you hold your breath, you're actually allowing oxygen to profuse the tissues, which is a big piece, especially with regards to performance and recovery.Interestingly enough, utilizing this method, Doctor Bateco also was able to conduct a randomized control trial supporting the methodology for its effectiveness on asthma. Now, the next philosophy here revolves around James Nestor's body of work and his book Breath.The Science of a Lost Art. James Nestor's contribution is sort of unorthodox. He's traditionally an investigative journalist and he was able to travel the world around ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, and choir schools to understand how we lost the art of breathing.And his big takeaways were our skulls have actually gotten narrower over the past few hundred years. The processed foods, less chewing, which obstructs our airways, feel like an ancient Paleolithic skulls.Notice that there is a wider dental arch, the faces are more forward and there's more of an open airway.Main piece. Here are the limitations of technology ancient civilizations had. So how they had to cook their food, how they had to hunt, how they had to gather, how they had to masticate their foods and really chew [...0.6s] their foods because either they're eating close to raw meat, raw meat or just food that's gonna be a lot more tougher and utilizes the jaw to a lot more higher level function.Whereas now in this day and era, we have the benefits of technological evolution and convenience, which we're able to make foods that are a little bit more easier to digest, easier to masticate where we don't have to chew as much.In addition to that, [...0.6s] society we live in is very high strung, very anxiety ridden and very focused on quick and go, right? What's quick, what's easy, what's convenient, how can we get it done faster, optimized, where that's not what's ingrained in our DNA. So because of this, we've essentially atrophyed our face, our dental arch.And quite often, I think of the saying that goes, you don't rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the love of your training.And that's essentially what we've come down to is because we have convenience, because we have things like technology, because we have things like a desk jockeying and working from home, we have regressed to this level of capacity.So in order to maintain these systems, we have to ensure that we maintain a level of training and readiness through things like physical training, through breath work, through the choice of nutritious Whole Foods that keep us balanced.In addition to this, James Nestor also created what's known as the perfect breath where he calls this breath coherence. It's a five and a half second breath.So five and a half seconds in, five and a half seconds out. That is around roughly five and a half breaths per minute. And really you wanna be in that sweet spot of five to six breaths per minute.So, so this is Mr. Nestor's interpretation of what an ideal breath looks like. Now the next philosophy here is gonna be through Dan Brulee's body of work, and he wrote a book known as Just Breathe.Dan Brulee is what you call a breathmaster himself. He has 50+ years in breath work, trained as a Navy medical deep sea diver at Cambridge, and he's trained Navy Seals champion martial artist [...0.4s] Tony Robbins.And his book Just Breathe is about more than performance. It's about using breath as a tool for emotional regulation, stress resiliency, [...0.5s] and even spiritual awakening. Danberlake created his model known as the convergences model, which are three principles here.The first being awareness, the second relaxation, and the third is integration.Now, the first concept is known as awareness. And this is a big piece that even I practice within the MBT philosophy. Whenever I teach someone how to move, whether it's a rehab strategy, whether it's something they have going on with their body, the first thing I want them to understand is to bring awareness to creating that correction.So for something like posture, I'll just show someone what, what good posture should be for them.This is all relative. You know so maybe they're slash forward, so I have them sit a little more upright. I have them engaged their shoulders a bit more. Maybe I'll use Canisio tape to give them the biofeedback so they can feel [...0.6s] when the tape pulls on their skin.And when the tape pulls on their skin, that is essentially them getting out of position or out of the ideal posture.So the kinesio tape is a nice piece of biofeedback as well. But all I'm doing here is I'm just trying to pattern awareness because the more aware you can become of whether it's a postural thing, whether it's a breath thing, whatever the case might be, the more aware you can become of what the ideal should be. Now we're changing the physiology.We're changing the psychology, and we're basically ingraining a new movement pattern in habit. This is the biggest piece here because as soon as you become aware of it, you might slap yourself on the shoulder and say, oh gosh, I, I'm out of I'm out of perfect posture now. Why can I ever get this?But give yourself some credit because now you're becoming aware of what bad posture means and what it feels like.Whereas before maybe you're living life and you didn't know you were doing it until all of a sudden you started to feel a weird pain and then you came into [...0.5s] my office or a pts office and they give you the strategy to make that correction.So the first piece is awareness. Through the awareness, you build good habits and you become more and more aware of it to where now it becomes like second nature. This is the exact strategy I utilize when I'm working with clients one to one.But I would agree with Dan Burley here that awareness is a big first step into creating the new movement pattern or habit or whatever the case might be.Now the second piece here in Brulei's work is known as relaxation. The idea here is that you wanna release any unnecessary muscle tension. This is an alignment with the Russian special forces model known as Systema, where relaxation is one of four pillars within their program.Now back to Brolay's work. He talks about relaxation from the standpoint of relaxing any unnecessary muscle tension.You think of it like a building of guidewares. Each wire should have its respective amount of tension. If one wire is, is pulling too much or not enough, it's gonna throw the whole system off in that same sort of nature.Relaxation is just, that is you want everything working that needs to be working, nothing more, nothing less, right? And in doing that, you can optimize performance, streamline efficiency, and everything is gonna be doing what it needs to.And the last piece here is integration, combining powerful breathing with deep relaxation consciously. And this goes back to the awareness model that I was talking about is you create awareness, you ingrain those movement patterns, you become aware of what ideal should be.And when it comes to the ideal, [...0.7s] it's gonna incorporate some components of relaxation in addition to that. There's gonna be a certain level of bracing.Sure, but the strategy here is optimizing where you should be, keeping everything in place, no stone left unturned. And the systems that need to be working are doing what they need to, nothing more, nothing less. You are performing at a 10.0 version of what you should be doing.And that is essentially the system of integration. Is now you've Learned it, you have these new movement patterns and you're practicing this 24, 7 based off of Brulei's work.The whole goal state here is an energized calm, is you wanna be alert but not anxious, you wanna be calm but not sluggish, and you wanna be in a state of what Brulee calls dynamic peace.You can make the changes and respond based off of your environment, based off of what you're feeling, based off of your mindset, based off of all these different factors.But at the same time, it's almost like you're surrendering, you're letting it be you're letting it do what it needs to be and you're just optimizing it based off of the environment.This is integrative of the biocycle social model. So your biology based off of what your physiology needs, your psychology [...0.5s] based of your mindset, maybe a spiritual or faith based practice, and the social aspect, that is your environment, what is your surroundings, what is your external stimuli keeping all of that in a state of what's known as homeostasis.So, so that you can be again to what brulee refers to as [...0.5s] the state of dynamic peace.Now the unique thing to brilaise body of work is that he's one of the first people to really bridge the gap between both performance and spirituality. He uses breath as a tool for emotional regulation and peak performance.So this is like the integration of both Patrick Mcgowan's work and the Yoga Sutra practices. Moving into the next philosophy here, we're gonna be talking about the Russian martial arts discipline known as Systema.Now we get to the source that influenced many of these modern teachers to include Doctor Vranich. Systema is a Russian martial art developed for their special operator forces at the time known as the Soviet Speznaz.The Vladimir Vasilia, who trained under Mikhail Riabko, add these methods to the west. At its core, Systema is built on four pillars: breath, movement, posture, and relaxation. So going a bit deeper, we're gonna talk about these four pillars now where the first pillar is breath.Breath is the foundation of everything and it's continuous and it's never under stress, right? We're never tensing, we're never hyperventilating, we're not hyperventilating, but we're always in control of the breath because that is the foundation which everything is set up.The next pillar here is movement where movement should be natural, efficient and without any necessary tension, very much like the breath fluid moving like water.The third pillar here is posture where posture is regarded to as alignment, which allows for optimal breathing and movement.And if you think about it, if I have a slouched forward posture now, I'm basically compressing and constructing my lungs so I can't optimize my breathing. If I can't optimize my breathing, my movement is gonna be dysfunctional.So posture is very much sort of like Brillade's body of work where he refers to his convergence model where it's awareness, relaxation, and integration [...0.6s] in the four pillars of Systema. Its breath, movement, posture, and relaxation.And this comes all together in a way where it's now packaged and integrated in this own model.So breath is first and it's gonna enable the entire system to work fluidly. And what I love about Systema is how they break breathing into specific principles. These aren't just techniques, they're ways of training your nervous system to respond differently under stress.Now, within system, as core breathing principles, there are five main concepts that I wanted to go over. Breath independence, breath continuity, burst breathing, breath holding, and slow breathing. Starting off from the very top.Breath independence specifically refers to the breath becoming irrelevant whether you're breathing in or out. It's somewhere in between where you're consciously aware of your breath, but you're not consciously in control of the breath.It's essentially like Dad Relay's work where he says, let the breath breathe you is the idea here.At first, it feels completely wrong and uncomfortable, but once you understand this concept, it's gonna relate to remapping the neurology that has multiple benefits, especially for situations where attacks can be sudden, surprising or unexpected.This is referring to the Russian martial arts system, systema. So something like a push up where you can integrate this is you're gonna breathe out on the way down and in on the way up for five to 10 reps, and then you're gonna reverse it.You're gonna breathe in on the way down and out on the way up. Finally, you're gonna empty your lungs and do five to 10 push UPS on a breath hold where the primary goal here is you wanna realise your breath becomes independent of your actions. It doesn't matter what you're doing, you're always breathing.But the main component here is a relaxation factor because it's easy to do this and not be aware of your breath. But is there anywhere you're holding tension in your breath?And this is the main concept that we wanna be aware of the relaxation, the posture, but again, the foundation always comes down to the breath.Breath continuity is just that all you're doing is linking the breaths together without having a consciously control or think about it. So it's uninterrupted breathing, and you wanna make sure you're utilizing that full inhalation and full exhalation phase.The change happens from in breath to out breath, and it should be natural without pause.And the main insights here are that her emotions, sudden fear, surprise or shock, these are all emotions that are gonna block our breath. And this is basically tension with bad side effects. So if you have tension, you're not relaxed. Again, this goes against the systemic model.The rule here is if you can do nothing else, you can always just breathe out. And breathing out is movement and thus life.The second pillar of Systema here is movement. So breath, movement, posture and relaxation are all integrative through this process.So here's a powerful example from the book itself. Imagine you're surprised with a plastic bag over your head. The untrained response is to panic and try to breathe in, but you get no air in, only plastic and your body goes into proper panic.The systema response, on the other hand, is breathe out first. This allows you to move, potentially disrupt the attacker and put you in a counter offensive position. Same threat, completely different outcome. All based on breath.The third concept here is known as burst breathing. And this is gonna be a breath technique that is used under excessive tension, fear or strain. Essentially, what you wanna do is you wanna inhale sharply through the nose and exhale forcefully through the mouth in succession. So it's almost like a hyperventilation, but really you're utilizing full range of motion of the breath.And again, the whole benefits here come down to a physiological and a psychological level.From a psychological standpoint, burst breathing is a pattern interrupter. It takes specific psychological focus away from the immediate problem, and it frees up physical resources to actually deal with it. On a physical level, it permits you to continue to oxygenate your body and your systems.If you panic and hold your breath, you compound your problems as autonomous systems begin to sound the emergency alarm.So the main thing here is continuous breath, the flow of the breath in through the nose, out through the mouth through rapid forceful succession combined, it disrupts both the psychological and physical paths that lead to the vicious cycle of panic, tension and more panic.This is like a panic tension cycle, a rendition of something we know in orthopedics as the pain spasm cycle. The last concept here is breath holding, which is gonna be very much in alignment with Patrick Mcgowan's work with the Oxygen Advantage.And this is one of the most powerful training methods in Systema. It's one that I've personally found transformative. And I can relate it to, again, Mcgowan's work with building carbon dioxide tolerance. But here's what the book of Systema says about it.Breath holding exercises are the closest thing to replicating psychology developed through brutal training methods without the accompanying injuries.You have a few valid benefits here as well from a psychological strengthening standpoint. This is where elite military units were psychologically prepared through brutal training, where breath holding gives similar psychological resiliency without broken bones or permanent injury.The second is clearing erroneous psychology. A regular breath holding practice clears out erroneous concepts of self identity, those deep seeded patterns of fear and avoidance.And the last are physical benefits where you have improved ability of the body to use available oxygen, improves circulatory effects and an overall more robust and efficient vascular system. This whole system was out before Patrick Mcgowan wrote the oxygen advantage.There are gonna definitely be overlapping concepts here. And if you look, these are almost one and the same where the main benefit here is you're increasing oxygen profusion to tissue and you're building your carbon dioxide tolerance.Another quote from the systemic book that I wanted to share here is that correct breathing is the difference between the ability to continue exerting energy for an indefinite period and total exhaustion.So breath control is key here. And [...0.4s] other programs like the Oxygen Advantage are great regiments and programs that we can integrate to increase performance [...0.6s] and recovery.The last concept within the system of discipline is slow breathing. So the idea here is you wanna perform a slow exercise whilst continuing to breathe in or out done in a progressive symmetrical fashion.An example of a push up would be where you breathe in on the way up and count to one on the way down. And for the next rep, you would breathe in on the way up and count two on the way down. You would do this all the way down until you reach 10, and then reverse the process back down.This is gonna promote fluidity of motion relaxation and create brain maps of neutral emotionality.And what makes system of breathing unique is its continuous breath. Never holding your breath under stress, never creating tension. And when an untrained person faces a danger, they typically either hold their breath or hyperventilate. This spikes cortisol, tenses muscles, creates a spastic diaphragm and restricts movement.Now Systema teaches the opposite where at the first sign of stress, you wanna focus on breathing, which is why breath is gonna be the first pillar within this discipline.So the method in itself is you wanna inhale through your nose to activate relaxation, exhale through the mouth to release tension, matching the breath rate to intensity of the situation. And you wanna use the breath to wave tension out of your body during action.I've used the same sort of strategy through what I call a body scan breath technique where I'm scanning my body from head to toe, using the breath to really fill in. So for example, I think about breathing it through my nose.I'm bringing the breath into my head, really paying conscious awareness to the crown of my head, to the scalp, my face, to my eyes, to my nose, to all my structures within my face and head feeling anywhere.I'm holding tension, scanning the breath to find this tension. And then when I exhale, I just think about letting it all go and I do this sort of breath scan all throughout my body.So I start with my head, move into my shoulders and neck, move into my hands, my arms, my, my torso, my hips, my legs, lower body, etcetera. This is a great strategy that you can use in a sort of meditative sort of way [...0.5s] in addition to that.You're taking longer duration breaths here to get back in control with your breath, to be aware of what you're doing, what you're feeling, and is a great way to down regulate your nervous system.So moving into the next philosophy known as tactical breathing. Within this philosophy, we're gonna talk about the warriors of today where the modern military has taken breath work seriously.Because when you're under fire, your ability to control your nervous system is literally life or death. Box breathing specifically comes from the Navy Seals, but there's more to tactical breathing than just one technique. And you might be asking why does a military care about breath?Well, the main thing here is because we're gonna have a natural sympathetic response, especially when we're under fire. And this is known as the combat stress response where you have that sympathetic response of tunnel vision, loss of fine motor control, and impaired decision making.This is not where you wanna be when you're thinking about life or death. This is all caused by sympathetic overdrive, which is your fight flight freeze response going haywire on overdrive.What we've come to realize is breath is the fastest way to shift your autonomic nervous system from fight flight freeze, which is sympathetic to a more down regulated state, where you're parasympathetic in the rest digest relaxation mode.And if you think about it like this, you can't think your way to calm, but you can definitely breathe your way to calm. Now the main technique of tactical breathing in itself is a box breathing method where they use a four second box methodology.So it's a four second inhale, four second pause, four second exhale, four second pause this is gonna be the cadence, and it creates again that box style pattern.So it's been studied that seal teams specifically use this technique before missions, during pauses in combat and for recovery. And Mark Devine himself, who is a former Navy seal and the founder of seal fit, stated that box breathing was the single most important mental skill I Learned.There are other renditions of the box breathing technique to include elongated exhales or to integrate hums within the exhale, again to downregulate the nervous system and integrate organic vagal nerve stimulation. But the main principle in itself is a four second box breathing methodology.Another combat tactical breathing technique is something known as the physiological PSI. And this was conducted by Stanford researchers where the technique in itself is a double inhale through the nose. So if you take the full breath in, you're gonna find the very ceiling of your breath.Hold it for a second and take one more sip of air is the idea. And then you're gonna take a long exhale through the mouth again. This is conducted by Stanford researchers to include Doctor Andrew Huberman and his research team.And they came to realize that this was the fastest way to down regulate your nervous system in real time with one cycle of breath, which can shift your state entirely. And it was also found that this naturally occurs during crying and before sleep. And it's the bodies built in a natural reset.So now I wanna take us in a deeper territory where everything we've discussed so far is about performance, recovery and daily function.But here is another dimension to breath work, therapeutic and transformational practices that go beyond the physical into the emotional and even spiritual. These are powerful tools, but they require respect, training, and often guidance.Now the spectrum of breathwork can range anywhere from conscious functional daily practice to therapeutic techniques all the way to making transformational changes where as the intensity increases, so does the potential for emotional release.Now these practices have been found to surface suppressed emotions, memories and even trauma. And these techniques aren't better or worse, they just serve a different purpose.Now, the two techniques I wanted to cover specifically are holotropic breath work and rebirthing breath work. Holotropic breathwork literally means moving toward wholeness and was developed by Doctor Stanislav Grov, who was a Czech psychiatrist back in the 1970s.This technique in itself uses accelerated breathing with evocative music and body work, and the sessions last anywhere between two to three hours and are done in pairs where you have one breather and one sitter. So this is a facilitated strategy.Rebirthing breath work, on the other hand, was found by Leonard Orr in the 1970s. And, and this technique itself uses conscious, connected circular breathing with no pauses. And the sessions himself last anywhere between one to two hours with a trained breath worker.So again, very similar to a holotropic breath work where you have a breather and a sitter.This is very much that same strategy where it's gonna be a facilitated session. And I'm excited to talk more about the rebirthing breathwork itself in the upcoming episodes where I will be undergoing my first rebirthing breathwork session.So more to follow on that. So I wanted to make a note here and mention that I'm not incorporating any of these methodologies, specifically holotropic or rebirthing breathwork with my MBT training methodology as they require train facilitation and the right context.But they're definitely worth acknowledging as part of the full breathwork spectrum. So here's where all of this comes together from me. What I deal with MBT is a systematic integration of all of these concepts, really.What I pull from each philosophy from Panayama is the ancient wisdom component, the variety of techniques and the breath to mind connection from Radish's work is the location of motion and range of motion, better understanding how to identify dysfunctional breathing.And these are objective markers that I can see just by the observation of having someone breathing.From Mccallen's work, the objective measures of something like a body oxygen level test, nasal breathing protocols, and carbon dioxide training from James Nestor's work, the science of why understanding the benefits of nitric oxide and how vital importance nasal breathing is to this molecule, along with the evolutionary perspective of how our breathing and airways have changed over time from Brulee's work, the three convergences model of awareness, relaxation, and integration into energized calm, otherwise known as a state of dynamic peace, from Systema, the four pillars of breath, movement, posture, and relaxation where we have these concepts of breath independence and continuous breathing under stress.Also the burst breathing methodology with helps [...0.4s] when we're under significant stress restrain and last the tactical breathing methodology where these concepts of boxed breathing, the physiological side and the realization of performance under pressure and how we can down regulate our nervous system through breath, not through how we think.See, MBT is not just one philosophy, the synthesis that makes sense for the movement. It's an integrative, collaborative process of all the bodies of work and research that were able to create and make sense of. And here's what you have to understand.See, breath and movement are not separate things when you train independently. They're synergistic, they flow together. When breath and movement are in sync, performance is optimized. When they're disconnected, you're working against yourself.Even like this, breath is a rhythm where movement is the melody. When they're in time, it's music. When they're not, it's just noise.Now let me give you a real word example. Take a sport like Brazilian jiu jitsu and BJJ, you have to know timing, you have to know when to move and when to wait, you have to know [...0.4s] when and how to create tension, when to grip, when to squeeze, when to bridge, [...0.6s] and you have to know when to relax. Conservation of energy.You have to know when to flow with the opponent, and you have to find the openings. And if you're not integrating the breath with all of that, you get gassed out fast.And BJJ itself is a microcosm of breath and movement integration where the timing of the breath helps you read both you and your opponent's rhythm. The tension helps you exhale, where the brace and tension relationship help you understand when to exert energy and when to load.And the relaxation phase is not about attacking, but it's about creating the foundation to breathe and conserve energy.Now what happens when the breath is disconnected? You're either gonna hold your breath under pressure, which is gonna increase blood pressure and induce rapid fatigue. You're gonna demonstrate shallow chest breathing, which is gonna increase carbon dioxide and induce panic response.You could also get to a point where you're not able to recover at all between exchanges, which is gonna create accumulative oxygen debt. Either way you're gonna get to a point where you're gassed out, where your breath and movement are mismatched.And it's not just because you have, quote unquote, poor cardio. And this is why for me, in my primate framework, breath is pattern number one. Not the squat, not the hinge, not the push or pull, not rotation or sway. It's all integrative, but the foundation and the base comes down to breath because every single movement and pattern depend on it.And within my primate framework, the eight patterns, again, start with breath, which is the foundation of all movement. The squat, which is bilateral lower body push, and it helps you understand how to load and fold the lunge, which is a unilateral body movement. We have to learn how to split stance as well.And it teaches us coordination and proprioception, otherwise known as spatial awareness. The hinge, which is a hip dominant movement. A lot of people don't know how to do this.Surprisingly, and within the clinic anecdotally, I can say that individuals who don't know how to hinge basically have their hips and their lumbar spine fuse together, which is what I found to be indicative of things like low back pain.So hip hinge mechanics, both understanding how to disassociate the hips from the lumbar, but also how to integrate them through coordinated movement through something like a hinge, is gonna be such a great value to either yourself or to clients.You work with pushing and pulling movement, both upper body and lower body. We have to understand how to load, distribute, and produce force.And this is where things like pushing and pulling are gonna come into play [...0.8s] rotation, which is a transverse planar movement. And quite honestly, what I found is people just don't get enough of it.It's either you're walking forward, you're walking backward, you're turning, and then you continue to walk forward or backwards.So the rotational component is a movement that atropies significantly because it's just something that we don't get enough of within this modern era of society we live in. And sway is the one that integrates them all together, almost vitally important as breath, more or less. The whole idea is applying these concepts in everyday life.Sway is lateral movement, instability is balance, coordination, proprioception. It dictates speed, agility, and reaction time. And it's all indicative off of having the prerequisites of the past seven movements. If we have dysfunctional breathing, our sway is gonna be thrown off.If we don't know how to hinge properly, our rotation is gonna be thrown off and we're not gonna have a good reaction time or we're gonna compensate through dysfunctional movement patterns.So sway is vitally important. And it's at the very end of the program. Because of this, we have to understand these eight movement archetypes. And in doing that, these are foundational movement principles where if you understand these, you're gonna be able to move in any which way or fashion based off of what you need in life and performance.Another thing to add on to here is that you see all of these different social media influencers come out with these quote unquote, new exercises.Really, they're not changing movement because our anatomy is our anatomy we can't change shoulder flexion any more than what shoulder flexion is. You can maybe come out with a cool different device or some sort of some sort but other than that, it's always gonna be the same movement.So that's why I've created this framework is because [...0.4s] it breaks down movement to its most simplistic form where it doesn't matter what device you have, what implement you're using, what method you use to incorporate these movements.The movements are straight and simple and are based off of our biology, our physiology, and our anatomy.And I wanna touch on one last piece here, which is why I put breath first is you can't squat well if you can't breathe well. You can't hinge safely without proper trunk stability via your diaphragm. You can't recover without down regulation, which again is breath controlled.And like I said earlier, you can't think yourself to calm, but you can breathe yourself to calm. That's the idea here, and that's why before we assess any pattern, we always start with the breath.Alright, let's get practical. You've got the science from part one, and you've got the philosophies from today. So here are five things you can do today to transform your breathing.No. 1, nasal breathing during exercises. Start training with your mouth closed, not at the max effort, of course, but you're gonna start with your warm up, your cool down, your low intensity work first.And, and quite honestly, it's gonna be uncomfortable at first, but that is your carbon dioxide tolerance building. And if you can get your Bolt score to 25 seconds, you'll notice a real difference in a change in your physiology.You can simply start with walking, like jogging or mobility work where the goal is to keep your mouth closed as long as possible during workouts. No. 2 is box breathing for recovery. Now you can use box breathing between sets before bed or anytime you just need it down regulate.Remember, four seconds in, a four second hold, four seconds out and a four second hold. That's just gonna be four cycles of that. That is the tactical breathing technique.Again, you can also add a second and a half onto that. So it's gonna be a five and a half box style breathing technique. Either way, you're gonna be able to shift your nervous system into a more down regulated tone where you're in that state of rest and relaxation.Some good use cases here are gonna be between heavy sets, before presentations or even before you go to bed.Number three is the physiological sigh. Now this is a great one again, if you need an immediate calm, gonna use the physiological sigh.Remember the technique in itself is a double inhale through your nose. We're gonna have one full breath and then one more quick sip of air, and then a long exhale through your mouth. Long open mouth exhale.Only one cycle is all it takes, and you're gonna be able [...0.5s] down regulate your nervous system literally. It's the fastest way to shift your state in real time.So some good use cases here, you could be using this during a mid argument, maybe a pre presentation down regulator, or even a post stress event.So you just finish things, everything's gone haywire. You're like, oh my gosh, where am I? Try this technique out and see how it just helps down regulate you and helps get your body back in sync. Take away. No. 4 is humming.I'm a big fan of this one as humming is gonna increase nitric oxide activity by 15 fold.It's stimulates your vagus nerve because the vocal cords vibrating against your vagus nerve are gonna be essentially organic vagal nerve stimulation. And it ventilates your sinuses humming in the shower, for example, or humming on your commute.It works, and there's research to prove it, and from a meditation standpoint, this is why OLM chanting has been used for thousands of years, and take away No.5, track your Bolt score. If you took your Bolt score after part 1, keep tracking it every week, same time, same conditions, and watch it climb.If you're under 20 seconds, continue to do the work, and work up to your goal of 40 seconds, where I promise you every five second improvement, you're gonna notice a difference in how you feel.Make sure each time you test this, it's gonna be under the same conditions. You wanna track your progress over time, which is gonna be measurable. And if you haven't already check out my free school community in there. I have a post where people are posting their Bolt scores. Um.This is just a great way for us to engage and for you to have ownership of where you're at in your journey. So let's bring this whole series together. In part 1, we establish the problem where 91% of athletes and really most of us are breathing dysfunctionally.We understand that we lose our natural breathing around age 5 and that your diaphragm is a pneumatic hub of your body. Know that nasal breathing produces nitric oxide and carbon dioxide tolerance is the real key, and the vagus nerve is why all these techniques work today.In part 2, we covered the solutions from 5,000 year old 20 Alma practices to Navy seal tactical breathing, from vanishes horizontal breathing to systemas four pillars and five core principles, from functional breath work to therapeutic modalities like holotropic and rebirthing breath work. And we covered how MBT integrates all of this and why breath is pattern No.1 in my primate framework. So if this series resonated with you, I highly encourage you to come join us in the free MBT community on school [...0.5s] where we go deeper on topics like this. I share breathing drills and progressions and you can ask questions directly. And when you do end up joining the community, be sure to drop your Bolt score in there and share which philosophies resonate with you the most. The link's gonna be in the show notes and you can find it at school dot com forward slash movement based therapy. And stay tuned as I'll be heading up to Portland in the coming weeks to do my first rebirthing Breathwork session where I'll be sharing that experience with the community.Remember, breath as medicine goes deeper than just performance. And with this, I'm excited to explore it and bring you along for the journey.So that's it for the Breath Blueprint series. Remember, your body is capable of more than you think. You knew how to breathe perfectly once now. You have the tools to remember. So honor your body, restore the flow, and I'll see you in the next one