The rusting body

Is your body 'rusting' from too much oxygen?

How often are you consciously connecting with your breath? Going to workshops or classes for breathwork, mindfulness or yoga is great, but what about outside of that? Are you integrating it into your day to day life?

Everyone practices breathing 24/7, but I like the quote

"Practice makes permanent, so be careful what you practice." 

One of the reasons I became a Soma Breath master instructor was to challenge my practice. One of the most important things I discovered to optimise my health & wellbeing was through the efficient use of oxygen. 

Why is the efficient use of oxygen so important?

The main goal of SOMA Breath is to correct your breathing so that your normal rate of breathing at rest is 3-4 breaths per minute. On average people breathe 10+ breaths per minute. Very sick or highly stressed people breathe over 20+ breaths per minute. This can help protect against disease, balance your emotions and help you be more in the flow.

When you are overly emotionally stressed, due to the burdens of everyday living, your body switches on the same physiological response as when under physical stress i.e when doing strenuous physical exercise. Your oxygen demand goes up and you breathe faster and more shallow, even though you do not need to consume as much oxygen as if doing exercise.

The 'rusting body'

If you imagine you have a fire in your body, just like a normal fire, oxygen is needed for the fire to burn, however too much oxygen causes the fire to burn too bright, causing damage, too little oxygen, the fire doesn't burn at all, and no energy created. So just the right amount of oxygen is required.

Just like metal that rusts in the presence of oxygen, so does your body, and its called oxidative stress. So oxygen control is necessary to prevent oxidative stress in the body. Antioxidants in food is necessary to prevent oxidative stress that causes free radical damage to cells. So correct breathing means less food is required.

Therefore being able to breathe less, manage stress and still function efficiently is the goal of Soma Breath.

Becoming highly efficient at using oxygen means you become highly efficient at creating energy and therefore you become healthier, stronger and happier as a result.