September newsletter - Getting Back to GO

A business associate labelled September the Artificial New Year, as it’s the start of everything.

• School starts – from pre-school, kindergarten, and universities.
• Employees are starting to go back to work as hybrid arrangements have changed.
• Meetings, events and trade shows are back to schedule.

He said it’s a GO for all with a mix of excitement as well as anxiety. This artificial new year offers opportunities for all to do better for sure.

To do better, remember to breathe. “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” by James Nestor is a fascinating book that investigates how we have lost the ability to breathe properly over the past several decades. There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing.

He investigates how humans shifted from the natural state of nasal breathing to chronic mouth breathing. We suffer allergies, snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, and auto immune disease because we are not breathing correctly. We breathe 25,000 times a day and every breath has an impact on our anxiety levels, blood pressure and heart rate.

James shares his personal journey, from taping his mouth closed and of his trials and tribulations of the experiments he endured to breathe better. Backed by scientific research and statistics, James says that when we make slight changes and adjustments to how we inhale and exhale we can improve our health and well-being.

I have been experimenting with my own breathing and realized that I too am a mouth breather. I certainly wished I knew more about breathing less and how it can reduce and eliminate asthmatic symptoms. I had asthma as a teenager and my son had it as a baby. I am more conscious of keeping my mouth closed when I breathe, including when sleeping which is hard as it keeps me up; and hope that I don’t have to get to the point of taping my mouth.

Amazingly and proudly for the first time when we were hiking last week, I was not lagging, and instead I was ahead as we hiked up the mountain! He is right about small adjustments and how we can improve.