Ever wondered how good everyday life could feel? asks Kelly Hopkinson. Here she explains how using your breath could help you to feel better and urges you to ‘shut your mouth’ to feel the benefits.
If you find yourself stuck in an ever-looping cycle of wondering ‘what if?’, this may well be the sign that something needs to change. The thing is, I’m pretty sure we’ve all felt that change actually isn’t as good as a rest like we’re led to believe it is. Change requires effort and energy, motivation and willpower and those are not in endless supply. How can we figure out and prioritise what to change that’s most important to us and worth the effort?! Is it possible to feel positive differences in our everyday life with mini alterations that can be weaved into what we already do?
I began to wonder what life would feel like if I had more energy and felt fully awake. If I had a body that felt healthy and strong; if I had clarity of mind to focus and concentrate; if I had a calm nervous system and I felt a sense of freedom. These were my goals. These ‘what ifs’ formed my hopes and dreams for the future because I quickly realised that, without them, many of the adventures and experiences I had pinned into my future wouldn’t happen or would be a lesser version of what they could be. It was time for (tiny, subtle, realistic) changes.
One of my many wonderings about what life could be like has centred on having that ever-elusive energy so I feel vibrant and fully awake; so that I feel alive within myself and am living my life with optimum overall health and wellbeing. One of the keys to overall better health and wellbeing is right under your nose. In fact, it is your nose. Your nose is quite possibly your greatest untapped potential in your everyday life and these next few words will hopefully inspire you to change the way you naturally breathe and empower you to just start. Starting without a huge build-up or planning is the perfect way to change (and improve) your life. We get to change the way we breathe for better energy, focus, circulation, immunity, stress relief and so much more. Changing my breathing was key to achieving the everyday life that my hopes and dreams were made of.
You are alive, which suggests with great certainty that you are breathing well enough to stay alive each day. That’s enough, isn’t it? Even though there is clear evidence that you are breathing well enough to stay alive, what if you could feel more? What if you could breathe better than ‘well enough’? What if you could train your everyday breathing to be more efficient and more effective than it is right now as you’re reading this? What if you naturally breathed optimally to fulfil not only your breathing potential but your living (and sleeping) potential? How would that feel? What would that bring to your everyday life?
Your breathing is untapped potential in a life that has many limitations placed upon it. Limited time, limited energy, limited resources. The truth is that you can be doing many a self-care practice or healthy living thing that can be proudly ticked off the daily to-do list. Exercise, healthy meal prepping, yoga, Pilates, journaling. And yet, you may still not be feeling that shift you’re waiting and working for. This is frustrating, demotivating and the downfall of many a healthy habit formation.
There’s a key that unlocks the limitless health benefits to all those wellbeing things you want to start doing or already are including in your days. The key is simple and something you do without even thinking about it. The key that will unlock optimal living truly is right under your nose. The key is learning how and why to breathe optimally. Optimal everyday breathing is the best possible breathing, individual to you and your particular mind, body and life. Step one to begin training your breathing to be better – to be optimal – is to SHUT YOUR MOUTH … and breathe through your nose.
That’s where to start. We each breathe around 20,000 breaths every day – about 7.5 million breaths each year. We breathe unconsciously without having to pay attention to it and we can also change our breathing on purpose if we want to. Impressive! Breathing ‘just enough’. But ‘just’ isn’t enough!
Don’t get me wrong, YOU are enough just as you are; you have enough and you do enough AND you can create changes to move forward into a new way of being, so all those untapped health benefits can be unlocked and, most importantly, felt by you. The only way to believe it is to feel it. So, shut your mouth right now. Unless you are singing, eating or talking, do yourself a life-giving favour and shut your mouth. As you continue reading, I invite you to keep your mouth closed to begin your breath-training journey to feel generally better, healthier, more alive and more awake than ever.
This awareness you now have of your breathing is now planted and connections between your brain and body are being created as you continue to read this and apply something new. Now, as you’re breathing through your nose, begin to breathe just a little slower. Continue to breathe slower than usual and also a little deeper than you just were. You may want to place your hands on your lower ribs and see if you can breathe in a way that moves your hands sideways, expanding the ribcage so that you can tell you’re breathing deeply. Or at least more deeply than you just were. This way we know the ever-cool muscle – the diaphragm – is working and strengthening with every breath, calming the nervous system and working to support your posture.
OK, a slower and deeper breath through the nose is serious breath training in action and can be cultivated at any time in your full-up day – out walking, listening in a meeting, putting out the washing, boiling the kettle, writing at your laptop. Let’s add one more element without feeling like anything needs to be nailed or perfect. Make your already slow and deep nose breathing a little bit lighter. Gentler and quieter, so that you can’t feel air leaving the nose quite as obviously and you can’t hear it as much. This is tricky and takes time and practise, like developing any new skill does.
This is the start: this is moment one in creating a life-altering change. Breathe lightly, slowly and deeply through the nose as often as you can with intention. If you were training for a 5km run, you’d have to start somewhere and with small steps, picking the training up and putting it down again. It’s the same principle in training your breathing to be more efficient. Start here, start small. Pick the breath training up for a few minutes each day and put it down again. Gain confidence, learn more, stay open minded and remember that the mouth isn’t part of your respiratory system – your nose is and it is powerful and right there for you.
There is so much more to learn and apply in the simplest of ways to support you in your life right now and move forward into the life of your dreams. Your breath-training journey continues here if you’re up for the ride to realise the answer to your ‘what if’ wonderings about how life could feel. Are you ready?
To discover more about the power of the breath, read more on the FitPro blog
Kelly Hopkinson
Kelly helps people manage everyday stress and improve overall well-being to lead the healthiest, happiest and most connected life possible. Kelly combines yoga and other functional movement sequences and her knowledge in meditation, physiology, neuroscience with her expertise around breath training to bring inspiring sessions. Training as a yoga teacher set the wheels of self-care in She founder her business – BE:WELL CLUB – alongside raising two girls and practicing all she teaches. Advanced Breath Training with Oxygen Advantage felt like the key that unlocked the potential for all of the self-care practices Kelly already taught and practiced herself. A TEDx speaker, writer, teacher, hiker, cold water immerser, paddle boarder, breather and mid-life enthusiast… Kelly’s passion for teaching the art of down regulating with the breath and movement in todays busy, stressful & tech-filled life, shines through all she does.
