Positive Health Online

Breath Coaching is a highly evolved and revolutionary approach to all breathwork. How? Because over the years, scientists who have invested a great deal of research into breath, have discovered that working solely on breath at the mechanical level, rather than the mechanical, physiological and psychological components, is extremely misleading and can, in fact, lead to enhanced health problems.

Anyone who has endeavoured to use breathing techniques as a tool for healthy living has undoubtedly done so with the best of intentions: they want to be healthy, feel good, think positive, enhance their awareness, and create a life filled with happiness, tranquility and fulfilment. Breath is the right path to follow, and yet, many people are being misled into believing that using these generalised techniques is the way to achieve holistic health. In fact, by following these rigid and generic techniques, people are at great risk of inflicting real and lasting damage on their respiratory system as they are failing to manipulate their breathing in an efficient and sustainable way.

There are many misconceptions about breathing, of course, which have, for decades, consumed the time and thought of people interested in natural and holistic health. The most common misconception results from breath trainers who claim that “deep breathing is good” and encourage people to “take a deep breath”. Whilst in some cases deep breathing does work for individuals, for many others, deep breathing can lead to Hypocapnia, a serious deficiency of CO₂ in the respiratory system leading to chemical imbalances in the body and the mind. Once locked into this state of hypocapnia, it is extremely difficult to break out, because both our dysfunctional breathing habits and the constant reassertion of the belief that breathing deeply is good, traps us physically and mentally into a closed state of breath, and mind.

How do I know about it? Because I have had the privilege to help people with breath analysis for over twenty years; analysing thousands of individuals and identifying their unique dysfunctional breathing habit with state-of-the-art technology; working with leading international researchers to gain an integrated understanding of the physical, chemical, and spiritual components of breath; and speaking with individuals about their own, very personal journeys to emotional fulfilment. What I have learned from my Miracle Course workshops is that the ‘enlightening moment’ that people experience during the session - when they first feel a “shift in awareness” and “spiritual awakening” - is, in fact, the moment the coaches have trained them up to the point of natural breath and out of hypocapnia.

I have had first-hand experience of all common breathing techniques, being a transformational breath facilitator and trainer for many years; I have experienced yogic breathing, breath therapy, rebirthing and holotropic breathing. People love these methods because they can experience all kinds of spiritual awakenings. Yet no one has ever been able to answer my question, “what is happening to my respiratory side?”. This eureka moment, the unexplained gap in breath teaching was the trigger for myself and a group of scientists to research this unknown aspect of breath: the result of our findings was the creation of the groundbreaking ‘Breath Coaching System’.

While your breathing habit may “look good” at the mechanical level, there may, nonetheless, be serious underlying problems at the respiratory level. What we have discovered is that, if you do not align your breathing at the mechanical level with its performance at a respiratory level, there is a serious risk that your health could deteriorate. That is why we developed the ‘Breath Coaching System’, in order to analyse individual breathing habits and assess the potential misalignment of people’s mechanical breathing and their respiratory chemistry. We have uniquely combined respiratory science with behavioural science, coaching and breathwork: we use this to analyse your distinct dysfunctional breathing habits and work with you intensively over the period of a week to correct any deficiencies or impairments.

This is the key gap that breath workers have failed to acknowledge before. So, we have targeted these experts, in particular, to assess how their breath techniques were impacting on their own general health. When we spoke with these breath workers and monitored them over a period of time, we found that everyone claimed to feel great and were experiencing intense levels of love and psychological awakening; and yet, when asked about their physical health, they responded saying that they had gained weight over the years of breathwork, but that it was due to influences outside of breath. What our analysts discovered, was that the breath workers were getting themselves into a hypocapnic state, which had triggered other degenerative health symptoms. Following their bouts of hypocapnia, these breath workers found they needed to eat more and rest more, nor were they as active as those who had managed to align their breath to their respiratory side. After working on their dysfunctional breathing habits, their misconceptions about breathing were realized; they felt healthier and more comfortable about expressing their emotions; and, after a period of time, they began to shed the weight they had put on over the years. They felt as though they had connected their enlightened spiritual side with their human side: this, as a principle to health, is of paramount importance.

The approach that must be made when using breath as a tool for better health and wellbeing, and the solution to dysfunctional breathing, is to re-connect and align your spiritual and physical health, rather than treating each as a separate and disconnected entity. Failing to learn this basic lesson means it is impossible to achieve the holistic health that we all need, and deserve, to ensure emotional fulfilment and the chance to achieve everything that we deserve from life.