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Hey there. Welcome to today's episode of calm your caveman. We're going to talk about a tool today that everybody can access which is really effective for anxiety. And that is the tool of controlled breathing or breathing protocols. And I'll just talk for a minute first about how I got keyed into this tool. Of course, it always goes back to my episode with long COVID. That's where I learned most of my anxiety management strategies. As you may remember for those of you who have accompanied me from the beginning, you know, that I'm somebody who's had anxiety my whole life, so it's something that I've always dealt with. But during the time that I had long COVID, it was especially high, my anxiety, because I was dealing with an unknown illness with no apparent cure. I had extreme difficulty sleeping. So I, I basically was hardly sleeping at all. And I had a lot of breathing difficulties. So all of this together served to make it a really anxious time for me. So I got into, because of my support group, I had a support group of other long COVID suffers, and of course we shared different things that we were trying, and I found from that support group, a reference to a breathing exercise program called Stasis breathing, which was developed especially for long COVID suffers, to help us with our breathing issues. And so I started doing this program because I was trying everything at that point. Trying every possible solution to my problem. And this Stasis breathing program, it was started by some former Navy seals, and they were teaching different breathing protocols that they used in their training program that help with um, increasing lung capacity and also help with stress management. And I found, um, some really clear physical health benefits. Probably the most prominent was that, at the time that I started my breathing program, after I had been doing it for a couple of weeks, I had one lung, which had been partially collapsed and I wasn't able to inflate it totally when I was breathing. And because of these breathing protocols, I was able to inflate that lung again. And oh boy, did it feel good when I felt it inflate like a balloon and I could finally get some more air. But besides the physical benefits of this program, I started to notice emotional benefits as well. As I said, it was a time when I was extremely anxious. So I was dealing with a huge load of negative emotions, including anxiety. But when I would do these breathing protocols, which involved um, quite a lot of breathing, it was 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes midday, 10 minutes at night. So it was about 30 minutes or more of breathing exercises per day. But I started to find after I had been doing them for awhile, that when I would start them, my mood would change and all of a sudden I would feel very peaceful and relaxed, and I would get the sense that everything was going to be okay. And so I really noticed this effect on my mood. Another breathing protocol that I started because of long COVID is the Wim Hof breathing protocol. For those of you who haven't heard of Wim Hof, he's a Dutchman, he's also called the ice man, and he has this breathing protocol as well as protocols for cold water exposure. Anyway, I started doing his breathing protocol, which, and by the way, I'll have links to all of these different resources in the show notes so that you can look at, look them up, and find out more about them. But anyway, his breathing protocol involves taking 30 breaths, rapid breaths in succession and then holding your breath for as long as you can after that. So it's kind of a protocol of hyperventilation and then breath holding. And I should say at this point, it's not for everybody. For people who have heart problems, for example, it might not, may not be the best idea. So you need to um, adapt it to your own situation. But anyway, I started doing these Wim Hof breathing exercises. And so you rev up your nervous system on purpose as you're hyperventilate, hyperventilating. You're purposefully getting yourself all nervous and revved up, and then you hold your breath and he, he directs you to hold your breath for a minute, and then it does another round and for a minute and a half now you're holding your breath. And I got to the point where I could even hold my breath for three minutes. And I didn't really enjoy the hyperventilation part of the exercise because it does make you feel nervous and upset, but the breath holding, it just gave me the sense that time had stopped. And I just felt this calm that would descend over me and go all the way to my fingertips and to my toes. And it was especially good for me on those nights when I just wasn't able to sleep and I really needed sort of a nervous system reset. And a lot of times after I would do this Wim Hof breathing, I would feel calm and relaxed enough, and reset enough that I was able to sleep for a little bit. So these different protocols were my introduction to breathing exercises. And I sort of discovered by accident that not only did they have physical effects, but they also had effects on my emotions and particularly on my anxiety.
And as I've said many times before, as I was in this long COVID journey, I was also doing my dissertation for my doctorate on anxiety management. And so I was doing research and finding different strategies for anxiety management. And so I started to study more about the effect of breathing protocols on anxiety. And a couple of things really stood out in my study that are good basic rules of thumb for you to remember.
One is that you have an autonomic nervous system, which is the part of your nervous system that controls those automatic functions in your body like your heartbeat and many other things that need to always be happening, but you don't have to consciously think about them. And usually we don't have very much voluntary control over our autonomic nervous system. But with breathing protocols, these are a way to exercise voluntary control over our autonomic nervous system and to be able to voluntarily slow our heart rate down. Because breathing has a direct physiological impact on our oxygen, oxygination levels, on our heart rate, on our ventilation and on our blood pressure. So it's a secret doorway into your autonomic nervous system levels. And if you want to activate or trigger the relaxation response, which is also called the parasympathetic response, then the key is that you want to have slower breathing, with exhalations that are longer than your inhalations, that that will activate that relaxation response. And that on the other hand, if you engage in rapid breathing and sharp inhalations and exhalations, that that will do the opposite. That will rev you up and um, activate the sympathetic nervous system. So. That's a, that's a good rule of thumb to remember.
Another thing to remember that I discovered through my research is that nasal breathing affects your nervous system differently than mouth breathing. So, not only does nasal breathing increase the amount of nitric oxide in your lungs, because nitric oxide, I guess, is something that is produced in your sinuses, and if you have more nitric oxide in with every breath, then that can increase your oxygen uptake in your lungs up to 10% over mouth breathing. So it's a huge difference in the oxigenation, the amount of oxygen that you can take up if you're breathing in through your nose. So that will, first of all affect your nervous system because you're have, you'll have more nourishment from your breathing. But another thing is that nasal breathing actually um, triggers synchronized electrical activity in different parts of our brains. And so it synchronizes your brain and helps you to relax.
I came across a study in my research that was interesting because it compared different types of breathing protocols and analyzed them for how they would affect people's anxiety. So these were all different breathing protocols that I was doing. One of the breathing protocols is what they call, um, cyclic sighing, which basically has to do with having these shorter inhalations and longer exhalations. And I was doing that with the Stasis breathing. So, for example, it looks like four counts of breathing to breathe in and six counts of breathing to breathe out. So you're making the exhalation longer than the inhalation. And you're making it, you know, a slow pattern. Slowing down your breathing is always a good thing as far as relaxation goes. So that's the one protocol is the sighing, what they call sighing, where you have the shorter inhalations and longer exhalations. Another protocol which I had been doing also, which they compared was what is called box breathing. And this is used a lot in the military for stressful situations, stress management. And it is basically that you have, for example, breathe in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, breathe out for four counts and hold your breath for four counts. So because it's these four equal parts, they call it box breathing. And in my Stasis breathing exercises, they were having me gradually extend that. At first I was doing four counts. Then I was doing six counts. And so anyway, so there are these different breathing protocols that they were comparing. The sighing where the exhalation is longer than the inhalation, the box breathing where you have these four equal parts, and then the hyperventilation plus breath holding, which was like the Wim Hof version, which is where you are taking, taking a lot of breaths in rapid succession and then holding your breath for as long as you can. So they had different groups and they were dividing people up and they had them do these different breathing protocols. And they also had another group that was doing meditation. And they were trying to compare if these different people do it for five minutes a day, which one is going to have the most effect on people's anxiety and on their mood. And it's really interesting. They found that all of the breath work protocols had more impact on people's positive mood and on their anxiety than the meditation. First of all, let's say that all of the groups had improvement in their anxiety levels from before to after. It was a month long study. So they were doing five minutes a day for a month. But that breath work was more effective than the meditation. And specifically there was one type of breath work that was the most effective of all. And that was the sighing breath, breath work, where your exhalation is longer than the inhalation. So they found that this specific group that was doing the cyclical sighing, that they had a significantly higher increase in positive affect or positive mood. And that increased the more they did it. The more days that they did it, the more that this effect increased. So over time it got stronger and stronger. So that's really interesting to know that this type of breathing where your exhalation is longer than your inhalation is so powerful. All of these different types of tools are helpful: the box breathing, the hyperventilation plus holding, and the meditation. All of these things were helpful, even just in this tiny little dose of five minutes a day, over a month. But that there was a big effect from this particular type of breathing.
So as I learned about how it was so important to have the, this type of long exhalation, and how much that can increase your positive mood and reduce anxiety, I started to find my own ways to incorporate it into my daily life. So I was doing, as I said, already, these Stasis breathing exercises. It was about 30 minutes of breathing a day. And that was of all the different types of breathing protocols. But I also started doing something that I called my emergency protocol. When I was upset or stressed about anything, let's say I'm just feeling overwhelmed for some reason, or I'm dealing with a difficult person, or I'm stuck in traffic. I do this in those moments and I find it really helpful because when you're upset, you don't have the brain space to be able to sit there and count your inhalation and your exhalation. It's too much right? Our brain power goes down when we're really upset. But I could do this at any point because it doesn't take a lot of thinking. So what I do is I inhale through my nose. I don't really think about my inhale. I don't count it. I just inhale through my nose. And then I exhale in a way that creates resistance so that my exhalation will be slower and it will take longer. So when I say resistance, it's that's, I do that by pursing my lips. So my, my lips are pursed and I'm exhaling slowly through my pursed lips for as long as I can make it last. And so I do that at any point, at any point during my stressful day and it, I can feel it immediately, this calm that settles over me as I engage in that long exhalation. So that's my emergency protocol that doesn't involve counting. And it's easy just to do at any point.
I also started incorporating this concept of having these long exhalations to try and help me with performance anxiety. So all of you that have been listening to me over time know that I'm a pianist. And so I have a lot of performances. And I tried to find a way that I could have this long exhalation practice be something that I did onstage. But it's not something that you can just add on stage at the last minute, because you're already nervous. And so if you're going to add something new, it's not going to work. So I found a way to incorporate it into my preparation of the repertoire, so when I'm learning a new piece, What I do is I, I'm practicing it and playing it with my hands, but I'm also singing along with it or humming along with it as I'm playing. And singing and humming both basically force this prolonged exhalation, this long slow exhalation. And of course, as I'm getting close to the performance, I'd stop audibly singing and humming because I don't want to be up there singing audibly on stage as I'm playing the piano. But i, I just kind of move it over to the non audible version. But I still am doing this long exhale that's accompanying the phrases as I am playing them. And that helps me onstage. I've already automated it. And so I'm playing along and I have this habit of breathing out slowly as I'm playing and having this long slow exhale. And that helps me to have more control over my performance anxiety on stage.
So in addition to these special applications, I like to have a five or 10 minute a day breathing practice. I don't do the 30 minutes a day anymore from the Stasis breathing, just because it's difficult for me to fit that into my day. But five or 10 minutes is something that I can definitely do. This specific protocol that I like to do for myself is I put on my timer for five or 10 minutes, whatever I feel like I have time for. I put on some relaxing music and then I just start doing a breathing protocol where I breathe in for four counts through my nose, and out for six counts. But as I'm breathing out, I'm humming. So I try and hum, along to the music, whatever it is that I'm listening to. And humming is especially effective. Because we talked for a second about nitric oxide already, right? And how nitric oxide really helps with your oxygen uptake. So that's why you need to breathe through your nose. But humming increases nitric oxide even more. So it gives you even more nitric oxide. It also stimulates, you know, your, your vagus nerve, which helps you to relax, and it clears out your nasal cavities. So I like to do this humming exercise because I really feel, I can really feel that effect of humming on my exhale and how much that relaxes me. So I'm breathing in for four counts through my nose and humming for six counts through my nose. Humming as I breathe out, as I exhale. Four and six. And I do that for five to 10 minutes. And it usually just feels really refreshing, clears out my brain, and I feel relaxed. And the more that I do it as was shown with the people in this study, the greater effect that it has. If I can do it consistently over time for five minutes a day, even just the small little amount. That it can increase positive mood overall. And it helps me to feel relaxed and in control. So I kind of liked to do it in the middle of my day. You can do it at any point that works for you.
But if you want to get even more serious, you can try the Stasis breathing program. I'll have a link to them in the show notes, it's called Stasis life and they have various breathing programs that you can sign up for. And they have daily exercises and they teach you when to do them and have have it progress over a month. And then you can move to a different exercise the next month. So it's very regimented. Um, they also have an app, which I think they're in the process of changing the name of the company. The app is not called Stasis. The app is called M E O, MEO health. And as I said, it was originally developed for people with Long COVID and with autonomic um, nervous system disorders. But they have a questionnaire on there that helps you to know whether or not this app is right for you. And one of the disorders that they treat is anxiety disorder. So even if you don't have any kind of breathing problem or other autonomic nervous system disorder, If you feel like you have anxiety, this program can really help you. And they have found that they're patients that do this program, that they have, they feel like they have more control over stress in their lives, reduced anxiety, increased overall wellness, reduction in stress overall, increase in focus, improved sleep quality. So huge range of benefits. And they also combine their programs with cold exposure. So I do recommend their program. It does cost something. The app, for example, you have to pay $30 for three months. It's a $10 a month thing with a recurring charge. But if you're going to buy the app, they make you pay for three months upfront, probably because they're trying to show you that you've got to do this for a while in order for it to really have the maximum benefit. Um, and I don't have an affiliation with this app. So I'm not trying to sell it. But I don't feel, in my estimation I don't feel that it is a negative to have a cost associated with a new habit that you're trying to form because the cost in itself is sort of a commitment that you're going to start that new habit. And if you've already invested in it with money, it makes it more likely that you're going to actually do the program. So it makes it easier for you to start it. But if you don't feel like you have time to do that much breathing practice or you don't want to have to pay for the app, you can just start with five minutes a day like I described. And put on some relaxing music and, breathe in for four and out for six, and you can gradually increase that and make it so that it gets to in for six and out for eight. You can gradually increase it. But I do recommend you going to the stasis breathing website. Again, there's a link in the show notes. Because they have some free onboarding videos from a stasis breath coach there that teaches you about how to breathe correctly in these exercises. How to do diaphragmatic breathing correctly. How to do nasal breathing correctly. All they did, all the different types of breathing protocols. They give you coaching step-by-step on how to do the breathing correctly. And they don't take very long to watch. And as I said, they're free. And it can be helpful at least to watch the first couple, just to be able to do this five minutes a day breathing practice by yourself. But just remember to do that resistance breathing when you're feeling upset, where you try and do a long slow exhalation, and maybe try, consider this daily practice of five minutes a day of breathing in this controlled pattern. It has really helped me. It's amazing actually how much difference it makes. So I just wanted to share that with you today, and I hope you have a good week.
And don't forget to stay tuned for our kindness narrative, your nearly effortless gratitude practice for this week. My name is Cami Nelson. And when I was about 20, um, I remember driving down the road in my neighborhood and seeing one of my friends on the side of the, walking down the sidewalk. And I stopped and, you know, Said hi, and I asked her if she needed anything kind of off the cuff, and she just said, Oh, I really would love a ride to the grocery store, and I wasn't doing much, and so she got in and we had a nice chat, and I went to the, we went to the grocery store, and I took her back home, and it was, it was a fun, actually, part of my day.
Um, a couple years later, I went to her wedding, and And it was in California. I was living in Utah and the wedding was in California. So I drove to this wedding. It was in a beautiful area. And when I got there, I had realized that one of my headlights was out. And there was also something else wrong with my car.
And I can't even remember what it is at this point. But, um, she found out and she had mentioned it to her dad. And we were all just kind of chatting and seeing what I could do about it. And, um, And from my perspective, I was trying not to make a big deal about it because this was her wedding, her wedding reception, and I could just fix it whenever.
I wasn't in a big rush, but her dad was so insistent on getting this problem fixed and really helping me, and he made me feel like just I was the most important thing on this day that um, that his daughter was Actually, I think it was just her reception, but they were preparing this big, beautiful reception.
But he was making me feel so special on his daughter's special day. And finally, as he was under my car, I said, why are you doing this? We can do this at another time, but I really appreciate your taking this time. But why are you doing this? Um right now and he said, well, I just want to share with you that one day my daughter had called me and just said, and been really lonely and having a hard day and she needed a ride to the grocery store and she um, she just needed someone and I had felt so bad that I couldn't be there for her because I was in California, she was in Utah and um, later that day she called and said that you had driven by and taken the time to talk to her and take her to the grocery store and I just want you to know that as a father.
That means the world to me and I hope by this small act of service I can show you how grateful I am for being kind to my daughter when I couldn't be there for her and I'm just so grateful for that.