Do you struggle with stress and anxiety? Poor sleep, bad digestion, mood and energy swings? If so, breathing exercises are a safe and fast way to balance your nervous system in minutes. Our modern lives are overwhelming and most of us are looking for ways to self-soothe and to find peace and balance. 

There are dozens of amazing meditation and mind-body techniques, but most take months or even years to learn. Breathing exercises are booming in popularity right now because they are both powerful and accessible. You can learn the Science of Breathing at home in just seven days. You’ll then have a self-care toolkit you can use for life.

Here are some of the benefits you can expect:

• Reduce your stress and anxiety, both immediately and long term
• Fall asleep faster and improve your sleep quality 
• Boost your digestion by promoting a rest and digest nervous system response after meals 
• Stabilize your mood and energy to avoid ups and downs
• Lower your heart rate and blood pressure safely 
• Cool your nerves before public speaking and difficult conversations 
• Improve your concentration and productivity

 

There are so many amazing practices to manage stress – meditation, yoga, and Qigong to name just a few – but the reason breathwork is so popular is because you can learn it quickly and experience measurable results from day one.

In our modern world, most of us are constantly bombarded with stress stimuli from work, family, and non-stop crisis news. This inevitably leads to nervous system imbalances where we spend far too much time in a fight-or-flight state and not enough time in rest and digest mode.

The first thing you’ll learn on this course is that balance is the ultimate goal, and we’ll encourage nervous system equilibrium through simple, yet-powerful practices you do first thing in the morning, midday, and right before bed. 

Breathing exercises have been practiced for thousands of years, predating modern science. Today, we’re fortunate to have reams of published papers to verify and confirm what ancient pranayama (breathing) practitioners learned through experience. Yes, our breathing patterns reflect our current nervous system state, and yes, we can reverse that and breathe in a way that will have an immediate impact on our autonomic nervous system and how we feel.

No other mind-body practice can reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure, and even alter the pH of the blood in minutes like breathing can. Once you learn how it works, you’ll have a powerful tool that you can use as part of your self-care and self-soothing toolkit available to you anytime, anywhere.

Breathing has such an immediate impact on your mind and body that even the act of inhaling vs. exhaling affects your nervous system differently. It’s common to train in diet, exercise, and even hydration, but almost no one trains their breath. This is a huge missed opportunity for health seekers.

Did you know…

• Breathing can change your blood PH (acid/alkaline) in minutes. No food, exercise, or medication acts as quickly.¹
• Reduced rate breathing can stimulate a rest and digest, parasympathetic nervous system state to help with sleep, stress, and anxiety.
• Rapid, pulsed breathing stimulates a sympathetic nervous system response to increase energy and prepare for exercise.
• Diaphragmatic breathing massages the vagus nerve and reduces heart rate, lowers blood pressure, and reduces stress.
• Symptoms of respiratory conditions like asthma, COPD, and long COVID can be successfully managed through specific breathing patterns.
• Breathing can help reduce the fear of public speaking, improve digestion, reduce insomnia, lower stress, anxiety, and overwhelm.

When I began studying yoga in my early twenties, I wanted to learn everything. Breathing came up in every yoga class, so I started asking the obvious questions: Why is breathing important? You say we should breathe deeply, but how deeply? You say breathe slowly, but how slowly? And why not breathe fast?

I practiced with some of the most esteemed yoga teachers in the world, including some modern masters, and I was disappointed to discover that most had only a superficial understanding of breathing. They all kept telling me to breathe deeply and breathe slowly, that was it.

Frustrated, I turned my research to the mainstream medical community, to free divers and spear fisherman, and to the published academic literature. Finally, I found answers.

Lucas has taught yoga breathing since 2006 and has certified over 1,800 instructors

Medical doctor, Patricia Gerbarg, has dedicated her career to breathing and her work and our conversations have been hugely influential on me. I also worked closely with senior Buteyko Breathing instructor, Jac Vidgen, who taught me about the vital role of CO2. I also interviewed several record-setting free divers and daredevils like Wim Hof, who push breathing to the limit (not something I advocate). I came to learn that there is no mystery to breathing at all. The science of breath has been well-researched for over 100 years, but very few people have applied the actual science to the classic practices of pranayama.

After nine months of research, here’s what I learned:

Discovery #1: CO2 is Your Friend

The main purpose of most breathing exercises is to manipulate carbon dioxide in the blood, not oxygen. CO2 should be looked at as a metabolic byproduct, not a toxin, and it’s crucial for optimal respiratory health and nervous system balance. Most people over-breathe, not under-breathe, so we need to learn to slow down and optimize CO2.

Discovery #2: Slow Breathing = More O2 Absorption

Logically, you’d think that if you breathe fast, you’ll get more oxygen, right? Not true. In fact, if you breathe in and out for a few minutes straight, you’ll get dizzy and might even pass out. The Bohr Effect explains that when there's more CO2 in the blood from slow breathing, it becomes easier for hemoglobin to release oxygen to the body's tissues.

Discovery #3: Simple Practices = Profound Results

My first serious pranayama teacher taught me 15 different breathing exercises with hard to pronounce Sanskrit names. As we went further, I learned dozens more. I’m a yoga nerd and love all of this, but if I’m being honest, it was overwhelming and overly complex. Here’s what you need to know: every single breathing exercise is simply affecting your nervous system in one of three ways – a parasympathetic, sympathetic, or balancing response.

In traditional yoga, breathing is traditionally taught as a steppingstone practice that eventually leads students toward seated meditation, so many of us try to skip ahead and simply sit in silence.

Meditation is amazing and I’ve trained and spent time with amazing teachers in retreat centers in five different countries. However, what you might not know is that silent meditation can create anxiety, frustration, and even obsessive rumination for beginners.

And the biggest problem with meditation is that frustration causes most people to quit meditating altogether. Breathing is different.

It’s fun and easy to practice. The counting gives you a mental focus, and the exercises are short and potent. The benefits you’ll experience are measurable, well-documented, and reproducible. This means that with minimal training, you can enjoy stress relief, nervous system balance, mood stabilization, improved sleep, strengthened digestion, and the ability to self-soothe at will.

Think of breathing as an active form of meditation with all of the same benefits.

My teaching style is simple, direct, and practical. During the course, you’ll follow along with three daily guided practices: first thing in the morning, midday, and right before bed. These are guided video tutorials with complete instructions that build on each other day after day. And remember, each practice is under five minutes long, so it won’t interrupt your daily schedule.

Each day, there is also a learning module to help you understand your respiratory anatomy, your nervous system, and the science behind these techniques. You’ll also learn how to self-test and monitor your progress as a student.

NOTE: you’ll have lifetime access to the program online via download, so you can refer back to your guided breathing practices and learning modules at any time.