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Thriving health is not only accessible, it is NATURAL!
It starts with the breath, the most essential element to our well-being.
Consider how long you can survive without food? sleep? water?
But how long can you go without a breath?
If you were to put a plastic bag over your head, you would almost immediately realize the importance of air. You can go only minutes without oxygen before you die! Breath is way more important than what you’re eating or if you’re exercising. A plastic bag taped around your head is way nastier shit than eating McDonald’s or food-like products!
1. Awareness
Breath is more important than food, and it’s practically being ignored!
There are thousands of books, articles, and discussions on what to eat and not to eat, thousands of diets and workout routines...yet very few books on breathing.
We’re breathing 24 hours a day on a daily basis. You can correlate the beating of the heart to the breath; the heartbeat and breath are always in alignment. Breaths are happening whether you are asleep or awake or aware or not; this adds up to 23,000 breaths a day! How many of those are you really aware of--1%, maybe?
Real, true yogis build their whole practice on the breath, and all movement is coming forth as an expression of the breath. They’re not muscley like Arnold Schwartzenegger; they are strong, but everything is easy because they’re so in tune, aligned, and fluid. Nothing to prove, just breathing!
When dogs smell, they’re really smelling! They extract a mass amount of data from their environment through the process of their breathing. Humans don’t even know they’re breathing! They’re just walking around, and all of a sudden, they get dizzy--”Oh, I don’t know why I got dizzy!”
We need to pay a lot more attention to breathing. You don’t even need to go anywhere; you don’t need to go to some gym! You can be sitting, standing, laying down, or driving as you practice conscious breathing.
If breathing is the most important, then what are the most important aspects of breathing? We believe it's air quality and how we're breathing.
2. Air Quality
If breathing is the most important thing we do in life, then the more clean and pure the air is, the higher quality the air is, which directly results in a healthier body.
Any sort of urban living is pretty much the worst thing you can do for your health; you’re basically guaranteed to be less than radiant living in an urban environment, especially if you’re driving on the highway every day. Do you have any idea what kind of air you’re breathing when you’re sitting in traffic?! In China, the air is so bad that they’re actually carrying oxygen tanks of bottled Canadian air!
So sitting in traffic or living in an urban area is detrimental to health. Ideally, live in a grove of trees, and leave it as little as possible! Get out of toxic air and into some place richer and cleaner.
If you are in an urban environment, high quality air ionizers, although they’re not that sustainable, are a super huge upgrade. If you have something like a home office, you can sit in that room all day and breathe ionized, rich air! You can even get one for your car. Or you can put one on when you sleep at night, and take in that healthy air for 8 hours.
The best (obviously) is living in something like a national forest with the windows open all day and breathing in that forest rich air. You could also get lots of indoor plants that specialize in air purification.
I like to sleep with the doors and windows open, even if it’s 30 degrees out--I’ll wear a hat and as many blankets as needed to stay warm, because I want to be breathing that FRESH AIR! I cannot tolerate being in a room with stale air, because I’ve realized it’s true importance. -- @quinneaker
3. How we’re breathing
Breathing is way more important than what you eat, and you can do it anywhere and any time! However, not only are most people taking unconscious breaths, but a lot of people are taking shallow breaths. Shallow breathing is shallow living!
Deep breathing is proper and healthy, and shallow breathing only scratches the surface of what could be. We can change our default program for breathing! Take a deep breath at least once every couple of minutes.
Most people have very bad posture, which affects breathing. Restricted posture pretty much guarantees shallow breathing. When you have an open and balanced posture, you naturally are going to be taking deeper breaths. Work on your posture!
I’ve reprogrammed myself to keep breathing, keep taking deep breaths. It’s taken hundreds of hours, and you have that kind of time! You do, because you can do it anywhere! You always have that time. If you have nothing to do, then start breathing! It will change your life. -- @quinneaker
Instead of coffee, take several minutes of conscious, deep breathing in the morning. Usually, the only time we’re breathing that deeply is when we’re running or doing something exhilarating. In nature, the only time we’re doing that is to kill something or to avoid being killed. Being high on oxygen will make you super attentive; it wakes up the brain.
Stretching is really important because it’s directly related to breathing; if you’re not loose and relaxed, you cannot properly breathe! If you’re stressed and tight and anxious, you’re not breathing properly! Stretching cultivates relaxation, openness, healthier posture, which cultivates deeper, fuller breathing.
It’s beneficial to move your body a little bit when you wake up and again mid-day, and take some deep conscious breaths. Seriously: it’ll change your life. It’s not that hard, and it’s free! Experiment; you don’t have to believe us. You will be even healthier than you’ve been in awhile.